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THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF 
THE  DRAMA 


v.i 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF 
THE  DRAMA 


BY 
BRANDER  MATTHEWS 

LITT.D.    (yALE) 
PROFESSOR   OF   DRAMATIC    LITERATURE    IN    COLUMBIA    UNIVERSITY 


NEW  YORK 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

1904 


lo-J 


ENGL.  LIB.  FD. 


Copyright,  1903,  by 
Brander  Matthews 

Publhhtd  SepUmber,  iqcQ 


PREFACE 

The  interesting  story  of  the  slow  evolution  of 
the  drama,  from,  its  rude  beginnings  far  back  in 
the  forgotten  past  to  the  pictorial  complexity 
of  the  present  day,  has  not  hitherto  been  told  in 
a  single  volume.  Most  of  the  existing  histories 
of  dramatic  literature  are  unduly  distended  with 
critical  biographies  of  distinguished  playwrights. 
Some  of  them — in  particular,  Schlegel's — are 
filled  with  the  echoes  of  bygone  controversies. 
No  one  of  them,  moreover,  has  taken  into  account 
the  threefold  influence  exerted  on  the  form  of 
the  drama  of  every  epoch  by  the  demands  of 
the  actors,  by  the  size  and  shape  and  circum- 
stances of  the  theaters  of  that  time,  and  by  the 
changing  prejudices  of  the  contemporary  audi- 
ences. 

Each  of  these  influences  has  been  kept  in  mind 
constantly  in  the  present  attempt  clearly  to  trace 
the  development  of  the  drama  itself,  down 
through  the  ages,  without  ever  delaying  to  nar- 
rate the  lives  of  the  leading  writers  who  found 
in  this  form  of  literary  art  their  chief  means  of 
self-expression.     Such  criticism  as  there  may  be  in 


t^>  10:^5 


PREFACE  •  ^ 

the  following  pages  is  not  so  much  philosophical 
or  even  esthetic  as  it  is  technical ;  it  is  concerned 
less  with  the  poetry  which  illumimes  the  master- 
pieces of  the  great  dramatists  than  it  is  with  the 
sheer  craftsmanship  of  the  mdcst  skilful  play- 
wrights. The  desire  of  the  author  has  been  to 
bring  out  the  essential  unity  of  the  history  of  the 
drama  and  to  make  plain  the  permanence  of  the 
principles  underlying  the  art  of  the  stage. 

As  it  has  seemed  best  to  leave  the  book  unen- 
cumbered with  foot-notes,  it  may  be  recorded  here 
that  the  conventions  of  the  drama  have  been  con- 
sidered (at  greater  length  than  was  here  possible) 
in  a  paper  published  in  a  volume  entitled  'The 
Historical  Novel,  and  Other  Essays ' —  a  volume 
which  also  contains  an  essay  on  *  The  Relation  of 
the  Drama  to  Literature.'  In  the  third  edition  of 
another  volume,  'Aspects  of  Fiction,'  there  was 
included  a  paper  on  'The  Importance  of  the 
Folk-Theater.' 

Of  the  ten  lectures  which  make  up  the  present 
volume,  one  or  more  have  been  delivered  during 
the  past  two  or  three  years  at  the  Royal  Institution 
of  Great  Britain,  at  the  Brooklyn  Institute,  at 
Columbia  University,  and  before  the  National 
Institute  of  Arts  and  Letters. 

B.  M. 

Columbia  University 

in  the  City  of  New  York. 

vi 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGB 

I  The  Art  of  the  Dramatist      ....  i 

II  Greek  Tragedy       38 

III  Greek  and  Roman  Comedy     ....  74 

IV  The  Medieval  Drama 107 

V  The  Drama  in  Spain 147 

VI  The  Drama  in  England t86 

VII  The  Drama  in  France 227 

VI 11  The  Drama  in  the  Eighteenth  Century  26} 

IX   The  Drama  in  the  Nineteenth  Century  296 

X  The  Future  of  the  Drama    ....  325 


1/ 


I.     THE  ART  OF  THE  DRAMATIST 


CRITICISM  nowadays  is  franker  than  ever 
before  in  acknowledging  the  kinship  of  the 
various  arts— painting  and  sculpture,  music  and 
poetry  and  the  drama.  As  an  American  poet 
once  made  an  Italian  painter  say, 

It  seems  to  me 
All  arts  are  one,— all  branches  on  one  tree,— 
All  fingers,  as  it  were,  upon  one  hand. 

And  yet  at  the  same  time  criticism  is  ever  re- 
vealing an  increasing  appreciation  of  the  special 
characteristics  of  each  of  the  arts,  a  keener  relish 
for  the  qualities  peculiar  to  that  art  alone  and 
absent  from  all  the  others.  While  every  art  can 
make  us  see  and  feel  and  think,  each  in  its  own 
way,  the  means  of  each  are  as  different  as  may 
be;  and  whenever  their  methods  are  confused 
there  is  at  once  loss  of  power  and  misdirection  of 
energy.  Ut  is  a  part  of  the  duty  of  the  epic  poet 
to  tell  us  a  story;  of  the  painter  to  give  us  an 


THE   ART   OF  THE   DRAMATIST 

impression  of  the  visible  world ;  of  the  sculptor 
to  fill  our  eyes  with  the  beauty  of  form  alone; 
and  of  the  musician  to  charm  our  ears  with 
rhythm  and  with  harmony.  But  when  the 
painter  puts  his  chief  reliance  upon  story-telling, 
and  when  the  poet  seeks  to  rival  the  musician, 
then  of  a  certainty  will  they  fail  to  attain  the  higher 
summits  of  possible  achievement  in  their  own 
arts. 

(It  is  in  their  technical  processes  that  the  arts 
re  strangers,  in  the  methods  by  which  the  artist 
xpresses  himself;  and  this  is  why  technic  is 
gain  coming  into  the  high  esteem  in  which  it 
was  held  during  the  Renascence,  the  most  glori- 
ous epoch  for  all  the  allied  arts  since  the  day  when 
Pericles  ceased  to  rule  over  Athens.  Craftsman- 
ship, the  mastery  of  his  tools— this  is  what  we 
are  now  demanding  of  the  practitioner  of  every 
art.  Craftsmanship  can  be  his  for  the  asking;  he 
can  have  it  if  he  will  pay  the  price  in  toil  and  care 
and  time.  The  message  he  may  have  to  deliver 
is  the  gift  of  God,  after  all;  but  the  artist  himself 
is  responsible  for  the  clearness  and  the  eloquence 
of  its  delivery.  The  prime  duty  of  the  craftsman 
is  to  know  his  trade,  that  he  may  give  a  fitting 
form  to  whatsoever  ideas  may  hereafter  possess 
him.  His  second  obligation  is  to  understand  the 
possibilities  of  his  art,  its  limitations,  its  bounda-( 
ries,  so  that  he  may  conquer  all  temptation  to  tryj 


THE   ART   OF  THE   DRAMATIST 

to  do  what  cannot  be  done  by  the  only  means  at 
his  command. 

^One  art  there  is,  and  only  one,  which  canf avail 
itself  at  will  of  almost  every  device  of  all  the  other 
arts.  One  art  there  is  which  can  reach  out  and 
borrow  the  aid  of  the  poet,  the  painter,  the  sculp- 
tor, the  musician,  compelling  them  all  to  help  it 
toward  its  own  perfection.  One  art  there  is 
which,  without  danger  of  confusion,  without 
departing  from  its  own  object,  without  loss  of 
force,  can,  at  one  and  the  same  time,  tell  a  story, 
and  give  an  impression  of  the  visible  world,  and 
fill  our  eyes  with  the  beauty  of  form,  and  charm 
our  ears  with  rhythm  and  with  harmony.  This 
one  art  is  the  art  of  the  drama,  the  art  which 
most  completely  displays  the  life  of  man— "the 
VDungest  of^the,  sister  arts."  the  British  poet 
called  it,  "  where  all  their  beauty  blends  " ; 

For  ill  can  Poetry  express 

Full  many  a  tone  of  thought  sublime, 
And  Painting,  mute  and  motionless, 

Steals  but  a  glance  of  time. 
But  by  the  mighty  actor  brought, 

Illusion's  perfect  triumphs  come; 
Verse  ceases  to  be  airy  thought, 

And  Sculpture  to  be  dumb. 

To  many  of  us  the  drama  gives  merely  un- 
thinking amusement  in  the  playhouse;  and  to 
not  a  few  others  it  presents  itself  as  the  loftiest 

3 


THE   ART    OF   THE    DRAMATIST 

form  of  poetry.  To  some  its  chief  quality  is  that 
it  enables  them  to  disentangle  the  philosophy  of 
the  dramatist  himself,  and  to  declare  his  ethical 
code;  and  to  others  it  affords  satisfaction  because 
it  is  ever  a  gallery  of  character-portraits,  wherein 
we  can  each  of  us  enlarge  our  knowledge  of  our 
fellow-man.  To  a  few  it  is  significant  as  the 
material  by  which  we  can  best  distinguish  na- 
tional characteristics ;  and  to  more  it  is  of  value 
chiefly  because  of  its  words,  which  can  be 
scanned  and  parsed  and  traced  to  their  sources. 
/And  to  the  scantiest  group  of  all,  perhaps,  dra- 
1  matic  literature  is  ever  interesting  because  it  is  the 
V  highest  manifestation  of  the  dramatic  instinct  uni- 
versal in  mankind,  and  because  it  supplies  abun- 
dantly the  special  pleasure  which  only  the  art  of 
the  dramatist  can  provide. 

To  this  smallest  body  I  confess  myself  to  be- 
long. The  drama  is  interesting  in  many  ways, 
no  doubt;  but  to  me,  1  admit,  it  is  always  most 
interesting  when  it  is  considered  simply  as  drama 
—as  a  work  of  dramaturgic  craftsmanship  pre- 
pared especially  to  be  performed  by  actors,  in  a 
theater,  before  an  audience.  As  all  the  great 
plays  were  written  to  be  played,  it  is  perhaps 
most  profitable  always  to  consider  them  from 
this  point  of  view— from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
playhouse,  in  the  terms  of  which  they  were  con- 
ceived. Other  methods  of  approach  there  are 
4 


THE    ART   OF   THE    DRAMATIST 

also,  of  course,  but  this  is  ever  the  most  neces- 
sary. Nor  is  it  a  work  of  supererogation  to 
repeat  this  apparently  obvious  statement,  and  to 
persist  in  reiterating  it,  since  the  essential  quality 
of  the  mighty  masterpieces  of  dramatic  literature 
is  only  too  frequently  neglected.  Praise  is  abun- 
dant for  the  poetry  that  adorns  the  great  plays, 
for  their  sentences  of  pregnant  wisdom,  for  the 
subtlety  of  their  authors'  insight  into  conflicting 
human  motives;  but  due  consideration  is  seldom 
bestowed  on  the  skill  with  which  the  action  is 
conducted-4tlje_acti^n,  which  is  the  heart  of  the 
play,  and  without  which  it  is  lifeless  and  inert, . 
To  some  of  us  it  seems  like  an  arrant  absurdity 
that  school-boys  should  now  be  forced  to  scan 
the  pathetic  passages  of  Sophocles,  and  that 
school-girls  should  be  set  to  parse  the  swift  re- 
partees of  Shakspere,  before  these  young  students 
have  been  made  to  see  clearly  that  the  tragedies 
of  the  Greek  and  the  romantic-comedies  of  the 
Englishman  are  as  great  as  they  are,  not  because 
of  any  mere  metrical  or  grammatical  felicity,  but 
because  of  their  admirable  cjramaturgic  structure 
—because  Sophocles  and  Shakspere  were  both  6i 
them  born  playwrights;  because  they  were,  first 
of  all,  not  writers  of  poetry,  but  makers  of  plays, 
masters  of  all  the  tricks  of  their  trade,  and  pos- 
sessing completely  all  the  resources  of  their  craft. 
The  dramatist  needs  to  have  his  full  share  of  play- 

5 


i,\ 


THE   ART   OF   THE   DRAMATIST 

./naking  skill  before  he  can  adequately  display  his 
power  as  a  poet;  and  i^s  this  play-making  skill, 
this  dramaturgic  faculty,  which  sustains  and  vi- 
talizes every  masterpiece  of  dramatic  literature. 

The  dramaturgic  faculty  is  evolved  slowly  with 
the  growth  of  civilization ;  and  play-making  skill 
is  one  of  the  latest  of  human  accomplishments. 
But  the  rudimentary  effort  is  everywhere  visible, 
even  among  the  most  primitive  peoples.  As  we 
t  consider  the  history  of  human  progress  we  per- 

"^Iceive  that  the  drama  is  almost  the  very  earliest  of 
Uhe  arts,  as  early,  perhaps,  as  the  art  of  personal 
adornment;  and  we  discover,  also,  that  it  is  the 

J  very  latest  to  attain  its   complete  expression. 

-  Only  among  the  races  which  may  be  excep- 
tionally endowed  with  energy  of  imagination  and 
with  power  of  construction  does  the  drama  arrive 
at  its  highest  possibility  of  achievement.  In  these 
rare  cases  it  is  the  most  splendid  expression  of  the 
special  gifts  of  these  races;  it  is  the  sublime 
summit  of  their  literatures.  But  in  the  noblest 
works  of  the  great  Greek  dramatists,  and  in  the 
most  powerful  plays  of  the  Elizabethans,  the 
same  principles  are  applied  which  we  discover 
doubtfully  in  the  rudest  theatrical  attempts  of  the 
lowest  savages.  Sophocles  profited  by  Aeschylus, 
and  Shakspere  by  Marlowe;  but  if  it  had  not  been 
for  many  humble  beginners  following  one  an- 
other, each  bettering  the  effort  of  him  who  went 
6 


THE   ART   OF   THE    DRAMATIST 

before,  and  all  alike  forgotten  now,  Aeschylus 
and  Marlowe  would  never  have  found  a  form  of 
drama  ready  to  their  hands.  By  considering  the 
dramaturgic  art  throughout  its  whole  history, 
we  can  best  win  our  way  to  an  understanding 
of  its  essential  principles.  We  learn  most,  no 
doubt,  by  a  study  of  the  workmanship  of  the 
undisputed  masters ;  and  yet  only  at  our  peril  do 
we  neglect  the  obscure  origins  of  the  art  far  back 
in  the  remotest  past. 


It  is  out  of  crude  efforts,  such  as  may  still  be 
observed  among  the  Eskimo  and  the  tribes  of  the 
Amazon,  that  the  dramatic  art  was  toilfully  devel- 
oped by  our  own  predecessors  as  taste  refined  and 
civilization  advanced.  The  traditions  of  these 
rude  play-makers  were  passed  down  from  genera- 
tion to  veneration,  and  the  art  slowly  discovered 
itself.  rThe  true  dramatist  is  like  the  true  states- 
man in  recognizing  that  nothing  substantial  caa. 
bejTiade^out^Qfhand,  and  that  nothing  survives 
whidTisnot  a  dev'eTopment  of  institutions  already 
existing.  The  one  untried  novelty  in  the  Consti- 
tution of  the  United  States  soon  failed  of  its  pur- 
pose; and  whenever  the  merely  literary  critics 
have  succeeded  in  persuading  the  dramatic  poet 
to  discard  the  playhouse  methods  of  his  own 
day,  the  result  has  been  disastrous.!  Art  must 
7  ( 


THE   ART   OF  THE   DRAMATIST 

always  make  haste  slowly;  and  no  art  ever 
sprang  like  Minerva  full  grown  from  the  head  of 
Jove— not  even  the  dramatic  art  in  the  city  of  the 
violet  crown,  where  Phidias  wrought  the  tower- 
ing statue  of  the  wise  goddess. 

In  these  earlier  attempts  at  the  drama  there  is 
no  tincture  of  literature;  and  more  often  than  not 
these  primitive  plays  were  even  unwritten,  being 
wrought  out  by  word  of  mouth.  Sometimes  they 
were  a  combination  of  pantomimic  action  with 
song  and  dance;  and  sometimes  the  dramatic  ele- 
ment served  solely  to  emphasize  the  important 
passages  of  a  narrative  chant.  In  the  childhood 
of  a  race  or  of  an  individual,  we  discover  that  the 
lyric,  the  dramatic,  and  the  narrative  are  only 
imperfectly  differentiated  from  one  another;  and 
we  can  gain  some  insight  into  primitive  condi- 
tions of  the  drama  by  going  back  to  our  own 
childhood,  since  youth  is  the  special  season  of 
make-believe,  strong  as  that  instinct  is  ifi  all  the 
seven  ages  of  man.  The  child  is  ever  imitative 
and  mimetic.  The  little  girl  is  willing  to  credit 
her  doll  with  feelings  like  her  own  and  to  hold 
converse  with  it;  she  is  glad  to  pretend  that  it  is 
ill;  and  she  is  delighted  to  be  able  to  change  the 
sheets  on  its  bed  as  the  trained  nurse  changed 
hers  when  she  herself  lay  sick.  (I'One  of  the  most 
striking  discoveries  of  modern  Science  has  made 
it  plain  that  we  must  each  of  us  follow  the  de- 
8 


THE   ART   OF   THE   DRAMATIST 

velopment  of  our  ancestors,  and  pass  through  the. 
successive  stages  of  animal  and  social  evolution.  > 
Much  of  this  journey  takes  place  before  we  are 
born,  but  not  a  little  is  left  for  the  years  of  in- 
fancy and  of  youth.  ^ 

It  is  from  the  observation  of  children  and  from 
the  study  of  savages  that  the  comparative  an- 
thropologist has  been  able  to  throw  so  much  light 
on  the  earlier  stages  of  human  progress.  Pro- 
fessor Grosse,  in  his  illuminating  discussion  of 
the  'Beginnings  of  Art,'  points  out  that  pure 
narrative  "  requires  a  command  of  language  and 
of  one's  own  body  which  is  rarely  found,"  and 
that  "  children  and  primitive  peoples  likewise  are 
indeed  unable  to  make  any  narration  without 
accompanying  it  with  the  appropriate  demeanor 
and  play  of  gesture."  Professor  Grosse  notes 
that  common  usage  means  by  a  drama,  *'  not  the 
relation  of  an  event  enlivened  by  mimicry,  but  its 
direct  mimic  and  verbal  representation  by  several 
persons  " ;  and  he  asserts  the  existence  of  this  in 
even  the  lowest  stages  of  culture.  He  recognizes 
as  one  root  of  a  more  elaborate  drama  the  duet  of 
the  Greenlanders,  for  example,  in  which  "the 
two  singers  are  not  only  relating  their  adventure, 
but  are  representing  it  by  mimic  gestures  " ;  and 
he  finds  a  second  source  in  the  mimic  dance. 
Out  of  one  or  the  other  a  true  drama  gets  itself 
evolved  at  last;  and  its  slow  rise  in  the  dramatic 


THE   ART  OF  THE   DRAMATIST 

scale  is  in  strict  proportion  to  the  rise  of  the 
people  itself  in  the  scale  of  civilization.  The 
form  is  enlarged  and  enriched;  it  expands  in 
various  directions ;  it  will  lack  literature  for  long 
years,  until  at  last  there  arrives  a  dramatic  poet 
who  takes  the  form  as  he  finds  it,  with  all  its 
imperfections  and  inconsistencies.  He  accepts  it 
without  hesitation,  certain  that  it  will  serve  his 
purpose,  since  it  has  already  proved  that  it  is  sat- 
isfactory to  the  contemporaries  whom  he  has  to 
please.  In  time,  after  he  has  mastered  the  form 
as  he  has  received  it  from  his  predecessors,  he 
makes  it  his  own  and  remodels  it  to  his  in- 
creasing needs,  when  he  has  gained  confidence 
in  himself,  and  when  he  hais  broadened  his  out- 
look on  life. 

As  simple  as  any  primitive  play,  and  as  char- 
acteristic, is  this  pantomime  represented  by  the 
Aleutian  Islanders :  "  An  Aleut,  who  was  armed 
with  a  bow,  represented  a  hunter,  another  a  bird. 
The  former  expressed  by  gestures  how  very  glad 
he  was  he  had  found  so  fine  a  bird ;  nevertheless 
he  would  not  kill  it.  The  other  imitated  the  mo- 
tions of  a  bird  seeking  to  escape  the  hunter.  He 
at  la§t,  after  a  long  delay,  pulled  his  bow  and 
shot:  the  bird  reeled,  fell,  and  died.  The  hunter 
danced  for  joy;  but  finally  he  became  troubled, 
repented  having  killed  so  fine  a  bird,  and  la- 
mented it.    Suddenly  the  dead  bird  rose,  turned 

lO 


THE   ART   OF   THE   DRAMATIST 

intoa  beautiful  woman,  and  fell  into  the  hunter's 
arms."     Here  we  have  a  dramatic  action,  com- 
y\  plete  in  itself,  and  yet  extremely  simple.     It  was 
^capable  of  being  performed  anywhere  and  any- 
)^hen,  since  it  called  for  no  costumes,  no  scenery, 
*id  no  stage-properties.     It  needed  no  words  to 
be^plainly  understood.     It  dealt  with  elementary 
emotions,  following  one  another  in  obvious  suc- 
cession.     It   was    wholly  within   the  compre- 
hension  of  the  spectators;  and  by  the  magical 
resuscitation  and  transformation  at  the  end,  it 
was  likely  to  appeal  to  the  love  of  the  marvelous 
always  potent  among  savages. 

Dropping  down  from  Alaska  to  Australia,  we 
find  a  more  spectacular  pantomime,  requiring 
more  performers  and  a  more  careful  preparation, 
even  if  not  an  actual  rehearsal.  On  a  moonlight 
night  some  five  hundred  spectators  gathered  in  a 
clearing  of  the  woods  lighted  by  a  huge  fire; 
and  on  one  side  there  was  seated  an  orchestra 
of  about  a  hundred  women.  "  The  first  scene 
consisted  in  the  representation  of  a  herd  of  cattle 
which  came  out  of  the  woods  to  pasture  on  the 
meadow.  The  black  players  had  painted  them- 
selves appropriately  to  their  characters.  The 
imitation  was  skilful;  the  motion  and  behavior 
of  each  head  of  the  herd  were  amusingly  natural. 
Some  lay  on  the  ground  and  chewed  their  cuds. 
Others  stood  and  scratched  themselves  with  their 


THE   ART   OF   THE   DRAMATIST 

horns  and  hind  feet,  or  licked  their  companions 
or  their  calves.  Others  rubbed  one  another's 
heads  in  a  friendly  way.  After  their  bucolic  idyl 
had  lasted  a  little  while,  the  second  scene  began. 
A  band,  of  blacks  were  perceived  creeping  upon 
the  herd,  with  all  the  precautions  which  the  na- 
tives use  in  such  cases.  At  length  they  wore 
near  enough,  and  two  cattle  fell,  struck  b3(^ 
spears,  to  the  highest  delight  of  the  spectators, ' 
who  broke  out  in  enthusiastic  applause.  The 
hunters  began  to  skin  their  prey,  dress  it,  and 
cut  it  up— all  with  the  most  painstaking  exact- 
ness. The  third  scene  was  opened  with  a 
trotting  of  horses  in  the  wood.  Immediately 
afterward  a  troop  of  white  men  appeared  on 
horseback.  Their  faces  were  painted  a  whitish 
brown;  their  bodies  blue  or  red,  to  represent 
colored  shirts;  and  the  lower  parts  of  their  legs, 
in  the  absence  of  gaiters,  were  wrapped  with 
brushwood.  These  white  men  galloped  straight 
up  to  the  blacks,  fired,  and  drove  them  back. 
The  latter  collected  again,  and  a  desperate  battle 
began,  in  which  the  blacks  beat  the  whites  and 
drove  them  back.  The  whites  bit  off  their  car- 
tridges, fixed  the  caps  on  their  guns— in  short, 
went  regularly  through  all  the  motions  of  loading 
and  firing.  As  often  as  a  black  fell  the  specta- 
tors groaned,  but  when  a  white  man  bit  the  dust 
a  loud  shout  of  joy  went  up.     At  last  the  whites 

12 


THE   ART   OF   THE   DRAMATIST 

were  disgracefully  put  to  flight,  to  the  unbounded 
delight  of  the  natives,  who  were  so  excited  that 
the  merest  trifle  might  have  changed  the  sham 
fight  into  bloody  earnest." 

There  we  have  a  sophisticated  analog  of  one 
of  the  best  known  of  American  spectacles— the 
attack  on  the  Deadwood  coach  and  the  driving 
off  of  the  Sioux  by  Buffalo  Bill,  aided  by  his  reck- 
less rough-riders.  In  one  peculiarity  the  Aus- 
tralian pantomime  is  more  significant  than  the 
Aleutian :  we  are  told  that  one  of  the  performers 
took  no  actual  part,  but  served  as  the  director  of 
the  whole  exhibition,  accompanying  the  succes- 
sive scenes  of  the  pantomime  with  an  explanatory 
song.  Here  we  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  expositor, 
who  in  the  medieval  drama  was  expected  to  com- 
ment upon  the  successive  scenes  of  a  passion- 
play  and  to  expound  their  meaning. 

Perhaps  there  is  no  need  now  to  point  out 
again  the  absence  of  any  literary  quality  from 
these  plays  of  the  Aleutians  and  of  the  Austra- 
lians, or  from  those  of  all  savages  in  a  similar 
stage  of  social  development,  ^n  fact,  pantomime 
itself  is  proof  positive  that  the  drama  can  be_abgx^ 
lutely  independent  of  literature,  that  it  can  come 
into  Jjeing^without  the  aid  of  the  written  word, . 
and  that  it  can  support  itself  by  its  own  devices/ 
In  the  earliest  periods  of  culture  the  drama  does 
exist  without  literature ;  and  it  is  only  when  the 
>3 


THE   ART   OF  THE   DRAMATIST 

people  among  which  it  is  cherished  reaches  a  very 
'  high  state  of  civilization  thafthrdramalslabkl^ 
j  appeararth^rtoftiestToriTr  of  poetry,  after  having 
W lived  for  centuries,  perhaps,  without  any  literary 
'  pretensions  whatever. 
J^These  inherent  tendencies  do  not  cease  to  be 
effective  with  the  advent  of  civilization ;  if  they 
are  truly  inherent  in  humanity  they  must  be  at 
work  to-day.  And  altho  the  action  of  these  in- 
stinctive forces  is  not  now  with  us  what  it  was 
when  our  remote  ancestors  were  yet  uncivilized, 
still  it  is  visible  if  only  we  take  the  trouble  to  look 
for  it.  There  are  few  periods  when  the  sponta- 
nemis^gro^th  of  the  unliterary  drama  is  not  to 
be  seen  somewhere ;  andlhe  I^story  of  the  theater 
supplies  many  instances  of  the  reinvigoration  of 
the  regular  drama  by  the  irregular  forms,  ^^r 
example,  the  Italian_^cgmedy;;0^-masks  seems  to 
have  originated  in  the  humorous  jesting  of  me- 
dievaMdjlage^^festiyals ;  and  nothing  could  well 
be~more  frankly  unliterary  than  these  perform- 
ances, since  the  plays  were  absolutely  unwritten, 
the  chief  of  the  company  explaining  the  plot  to 
his  companions,  and  the  several  comedians  then 
improvising  the  dialog  during  the  performance 
itsely  Yet  this  comedy-of-masks  was  lifted  into 
literature  by  Moliere,  whose  first  long  play,  the 
*  fitourdi,'  is  nothing  more  or  less  than  a  comedy- 
of-masks  carefully  written  out  in  brilliant  verse, 
H 


THE   ART   OF  THE   DRAMATIST 

In  like  manner  the  melodrama,  which  had 
been  elaborated  year  by  year  in  the  variety-shows 
of  the  eighteenth  century  fairs  of  Paris,  served 
early  in  the  nineteenth  century  as  a  model  for  the 
striking  plays  of  Victor  Hugo  and  of  the  elder 
Dumas.  In  Hugo's  case  the  rather  violent  frame- 
work of  the  melodrama  was  so  splendidly  draped 
and  decorated  by  his  incomparable  lyric  magnifi- 
cence that  a  critic  so  susceptible  as  Mr.  Swinburne 
was  moved  to  hail  the  French  poet  as  of  the  race 
and  lineage  of  Shakspere.  The  French  melodrama 
and  the  Italian  comedy-of-masks  were  each  of 
them,  at  one  stage  of  its  career,  almost  as  unlit- 
erary  as  the  pantomimes  of  the  Aleutians  and  the 
Australians;  and  yet  we  can  see  how  each  of 
them  in  turn  has  been  elevated  by  a  poet. 


Ill 

It  is,  perhaps,  going  a  little  too  far  to  assert 
that  the  drama  can  be  as  independent  of  literature 
as  painting  may  be,  or  as  sculpture;  and  yet  this 
is  an  overstaj^iSB^nt  only :  it  is  not  anjjjatruth. 
The  painter  seeks  primarily  for  pictorial  effects, 
and  the  sculptor  for  plastic  effects— just  as  the 
dramatist  is  seeking  primarily  for  drarojUk  effects. 
On  the  other  hand,  there  is  no  denying  that  the 
masterpieces  of  the  graphic  arts  have  all  of  them 
a  poetic  quality  in  addition  to  their  pictorial  and 
«5 


THE   ART   OF   THE    DRAMATIST 

plastic  qualities.  To  be  recognized  as  master- 
pieces, they  must  needs  possess  something  more 
than  merely  technical  merits;  but  without  these 
technical  merits  they  would  not  be  masterpieces. 
No  fresco,  no  bas-relief,  is  fine  because  of  its 
poetic  quality  alone.  In  like  manner,  we  may  be 
sure  that  there  is  no  masterpiece  of  the  drama  in 
^hich  the  poetic  quality,  however  remarkable  it 
/may  be,  is  not  sustained  by  a  solid  structure  of 
'  dramaturgic  technic.  The  great  dramatist  must 
be  a  poet,  of  course;  but  first  of  all  he  must  be 
a  theat£tJ2pet,  to  borrow  the  useful  German  term. 
And  irTs  a  German  critic— Schlegel— who  has 
drawn  attention  to  the  difference  in  dramatic 
capacity  which  subsists  among  nations  equally 
distinguished  for  intellect,  "  so  that  theatrical  tal- 
ent would  seem  to  be  a  peculiar  quality,  essen- 
tially distinct  from  the  poetic  gift  in  general." 
By  the  phrase  "  theatrical  talent "  Schlegel  obvi- 
ously means  the  dramaturgic  faculty,  the  skill  of 
the  born^glay-makgr.  Voltaire  says  somewhere 
that  the  success  of  a  poem  lies  largely  in  the  choice 
of  a  subject;  and  it  is  even  more  certain  that  the 
success  of  a  play  lies  in  the  ei^i^pf  tbe  sj^cial 
asp^Jg^f  the  subject  which  shall  be  shown  in 
action  on  the  stage.  If  the  poet  is  not  a  play- 
wright, or  if  he  cannot  acquire  the  playwright's 
gift  of  vickij^i^r^j^ut  the  scenes  which  will  unfail- 
ingly move  the  hearts  of  the  spectators,  then  his 


THE   ART  OF   THE   DRAMATIST 

sheer  poetic  power  will  not  save  him,  nor  any 
affluence  of  imagery— just  as  no  luxuriance  of 
decoration  would  avail  to  keep  a  house  standing 
if  the  foundations  were  faulty. 

This  dramaturgic  faculty,  without  which  the 
most  melodious  poet  cannot  hope  to  win  accep- 
tance as  a  dramatist,  seems  to  be  generally  in- 
stinctive. It  is  a  birthright  of  the  play-maker, 
from  whom  it  can  sometimes  be  acquired  by 
poets  not  so  gifted  by  nature.  For  example, 
Victor  Hugo  was  a  poet  who  was  not  a  born  play- 
wright, but  who  managed  to  attain  the  essen- 
tial principles  of  the  craft— essential  principles 
which  poets  of  the  power  and  sweep  of  Byron 
and  Browning  were  never  able  to  grasp.  These 
British  bards  were  without  the  dramaturgic  fac- 
ulty which  was  possessed,  in  some  measure,  by 
the  unliterary  play-makers  who  devised  the  Italian 
comedy-of-masks. 

In  the  early  days  of  any  art  there  is  always 
imperfect  differentiation;  and  the  polychromatic 
bas-reliefs  of  the  Egyptians  remind  us  that  it  was 
long  before  painting  and  sculpture  were  sepa- 
rated. Not  only  are  comedy  and  tragedy  not 
carefully  kept  apart,  but  the  drama  itself  is  com- 
mingled with  much  that  is  not  truly  dramatic, 
and  only  by  slow  degrees  iz  it  able  to  disentangle 
itself  from  these  extraneous  matters.  Even  in 
the  days  of  the  great  Greeks  a  lyric  element  sur- 

«7 


/ 


THE   ART  OF  THE   DRAMATIST' 

vived  in  their  tragedies  which  was  often  quite 
undramatic;  and  even  in  England,  under  Eliza- 
beth, the  stage  was  sometimes  made  to  serve  as 
a  pulpit  on  which  a  sermon  was  preached,  or 
as  a  platform  on  which  a  lecture  was  delivered, 
while  the  action  of  the  play  was  forced  to  stand 
still. 

There  is  also  to  be  noted  in  every  period  of 
play-making  a  frequent  element  of  mere  spectacle. 
The  rhythmic  movements  of  the  Greek  chorus  in 
the  orchestra  and  their  statuesque  attitudes  were 
meant  to  take  the  eye,  like  the  coronation  pro- 
cessions in  the  English  chronicle-play  of  '  Henry 
VIll.'  Anything  of  this  sort  is  in  its  appropriate 
place  in  the  masks  of  Ben  Jonson  and  Inigo  Jones, 
or  in  the  comedies-ballets  which  Moliere  was  so 
fertile  in  inventing  for  Louis  XIV;  but  it  is  quite 
out  of  keeping  with  the  serious  drama,  being 
wholly  spectacular.  Equally  undramatic  are  the 
so-called  "  jigs  "  of  the  Elizabethan  comic  actors 
and  the  ground-and-lof  ty  tumbling  of  the  acrobatic 
performers  who  took  part  in  the  Italian  comedy- 
of-masks.'  The  persistent  exhibition  of  trained 
animals  of  one  kind  or  another,  and  their  arbitrary 
inclusion  Within  the  story  of  the  play  itself,  belongs 
to  this  frankly  amusing  aspect  of  theatrical  enter- 
tainment. Here  again  the  mere  poet  is  likely 
to  be  unyielding  where  the  born  playwright  is 
tolerant,  sometimes  even  finding  his  account  in 
i8 


THE  ART   OF   THE   DRAMATIST 

this  taste  of  the  public  for  the  tricks  of  an  over- 
educated  quadruped.  In  the  'Two  Gentlemen 
of  Verona '  Shakspere  wrote  a  part  for  a  trained 
dog,  whereas  it  was  a  trained  dog  that  led  Goethe 
to  resign  the  control  of  the  Weimar  theater;  —but 
then,  Goethe  was  a  poet  rather  than  a  theater- 
poet. 

IV 

•  All  these  dogs  and  dances  and  processions  are 
mere  accidental  accessories ;  and  they  have  no  vital 
relation  to  the  fundamental  principles  of  drama- 
turgy. By  slow  degrees  the  dramatist  gets  con- 
trol of  his  material,  and  comes  to  a  conscious 
appreciation  of  the  necessities  of  his  art.  He 
may  not  be  able  to  formulate  the  conditions  which 
these  necessities  impose,  but  he  has  an  intuitive 
perception  of  their  requirements.  These  drama- 
turgic principles  are  not  mere  rules  laid  down  by 
theoretical  critics,  who  have  rarely  any  acquain- 
tance with  the  actual  theater;  tji^j^^jaws,  in- 
herent in  the  nature  of  the  art  ItseTTTstanding 
eternal,  as  immitigable  to-day  as  when  Sophocles 
was  alive,  or  Shakspere,  or  Moliere.  It  is  because 
these  laws  are  unchanging  that  the  observation 
of  the  modern  theater  helps  to  give  us  an  insight 
into  the  methods  of  the  ancient  theater.  And 
we  can  go  a  step  further,  and  confess  that  the 
latest  burlesque  in  a  music-hall,  with  its  topical 
19 


THE   ART   OF   THE   DRAMATIST 

songs  and  its  parodies,  may  be  of  immediate  as- 
sistance to  us  in  seizing  the  intent  and  in  un- 
derstanding the  methods  of  Aristophanes. 

To  M.   Ferdinand   Brunetiere— who  profited, 

perhaps,  by  a  hint  of  Hegel's— we  owe  the  clearest 

statement  of  one  important  law  only  dimly  per- 

jjceived  by  earlier  critics.     He  declares  that  the 

I  [drama  differs  from  the  other  forms  of  literature 

j  ijin  that  it  must  always  deal  with  some  exertion 

(  |of  the  human  will,  /if  a  play  is  really  to  interest 

'  Vis,  it  must  present  a  struggle;  its  chief  character 

must  desire  something,  striving  for  it  with  all 

the  forces  of  his  being.^  Aristotle  has  defined 

tragedy  as  "the  imitation  of  an  action,"  but  by 

action  he  does  not  mean  mere  movement— the 

fictitious  bustle  often  found  in  melodrama  and  in 

farce.     Perhaps  the  Greek  critic  intended  action 

to  be  interpreted  struggle,  a  struggle  in  which  the 

hero  knows  what  he  wants,  and  wants  it  with  all 

his  might,  and  does  his  best  to  get  it.     He  may 

be  thwarted  by  some  overpowering  antagonist, 

or  may  be  betrayed  by  some  internal  weakness 

»  •f  his  own  soul;  but  the  strength  of  the  play  and 

'Its  interest  to  the  spectator  will  lie  in  the  balance 

/of  the  contending  forces. 

Prometheus,  riveted  to  the  rock,  is  determined, 
at  any  cost  to  himself,  not  to  reveal  the  secret- 
which  the  unjust  god  is  seeking  to  wrest  from 
him.     Oedipus,  the  king,  insists  vehemently  and 

20 


THE   ART   OF  THE   DRAMATIST 

irrevocably  on  discovering  the  secret  that  can 
bring  only  his  own  doom.  Romeo  is  headstrong 
to  marry  Juliet,  and  Juliet  is  bound  to  wed 
Romeo,  no  matter  who  says  them  nay,  and  in 
spite  of  the  fierceness  of  the  deadly  feud  of  the 
two  families.  Shylock  purposes  to  have  his 
pound  of  flesh,  and  he  is  not  to  be  turned  aside 
from  his  lust  of  revenge  by  any  magnanimous 
appeals  for  mercy.  TartufTe  is  resolved  to  go 
any  length  to  get  Orgon's  money,  and  he  is  ready 
to  run  any  risk  to  get  Orgon's  wife.  Lady  Teazle 
is  set  on  having  her  own  way,  and  in  gratifying 
her  varying  whims,  even  tho  she  ruins  herself.  • 
tf  A  determined  will,  resolute  in  seeking  its  ownj 
end,  this  is  what  we  always  find  in  the  dramatic 
form ;  and  this  is  what  we  do  not  find  in  the  lyric' 
or  the  epi^  (In  the  lyric  the  poet  is  satisfied  if 
he  is  able  to  set  forth  his  own  sentiment.  (The 
epic  poet— with  whom  the  novelist  must  needs 
be  classed  nowadays— has  to  do  mainly  with 
adventure  and  with  charactecj  His  narrative  is 
not  necessarily  dramatic;  it  may,  if  he  should  so 
prefer,  be  as  placid  as  a  mill-pond.  There  is  no 
obligation  on  the  novelist  to  deal  with  what  Ste- 
venson has  finely  called  the  great  passionate  crises 
of  existence  "when  duty  and  inclination  come 
nobly  to  the  grapple."  He  may  do  so  if  he 
chooses,  and  if  he  does,  his  novel  is  then  truly 
dramatic;  but  he  need  not  deal  with  this  conflict 

21 


THE   ART   OF   THE   DRAMATIST 

unless  he  likes,  and  not  a  few  novels  of  distinc- 
tion are  not  intended  to  be  dramatic.  Gil  Bias, 
Torri  Jones,  and  Waverley,  Mr.  Pickwick  and 
Tartarin  of  Tarascon,  Silas  Lapham  and  Huckle- 
berry Finn,  are  none  of  them  beings  of  unfaltering 
determination,  nor  do  they  exert  a  controlling 
influence  over  the  conduct  of  the  stories  to  which 
they  have  given  their  names.  Each  of  them  is 
more  or  less  a  creature  of  accident  and  a  victim 
of  circumstance.  No  one  of  them  is  master  of  his 
own  fate,  or  even  steersman  of  his  own  bark  on 
the  voyage  of  life.  M.  Brunetiere  has  drawn  our 
attention  to  the  many  resemblances  between  *  Gil 
Bias  '  and  the  *  Marriage  of  Figaro  '  in  local  color 
and  in  moral  tone;  and  then  he  points  out  that 
the  comic  hero  of  the  novel  is  the  sport  of  chance 
—he  is  passive ;  while  the  comic  hero  of  the  play  is 
active,  he  has  made  up  his  mind  to  defend  his 
bride  against  his  master;  and  this  struggle  is  the 
core  of  the  comedy.  The  drama  of  Beaumarchais 
might  be  turned  into  a  narrative  easily  enough; 
but  the  story  of  Lesage  could  never  be  made  into 
a  play.  And  here  we  may  perceive  a  reason  why 
the  modern  novel  of  character-analysis  can  very 
seldom  be  dramatized  successfully. 

This  law  of  the  drama  formulated  by  M.  Brune- 
tiere carries  with  it  certain  interesting  corol- 
laries. For  example,  if  the  drama  demands  a 
display  of  the  human  will,  then  we  are  justified 


THE   ART   OF  THE   DRAMATIST 

in  expecting  to  find  the  theater  feeblest  in  the 
races  of  little  energy  and  most  flourishing  among  / 
the  more  self-assertive  peoples,  and  especially  in/ 
the  periods  of  their  outflowering  and  expansion.! 
This  is  precisely  what  we  do  find;  and  here  we* 
have  the  explanation  of  Schlegel's  assertion  that 
"  in  the  drama  nationality  shows  itself  in  the  most 
marked  manner."  The  native  Egyptian  has  been 
the  slave  of  many  masters  for  scores  of  centuries, 
never  strong  enough  of  purpose  to  rise  against 
them  and  rule  himself;  and  to-day  the  fellahs  of 
the  valley  of  the  Nile  appear  to  be  exactly  what 
their  ancestors  were  three  and  four  thousand 
years  ago.  Since  the  dawn  of  history  they  seem 
never  to  have  had  souls  of  their  own ;  and  a  care- 
ful search  amid  the  abundant  material  in  their 
rmiseums  fails  to  find  any  trace  of  a  native  drama. 
i^The  drama  has  no  place  in  the  existence  of  the 
>^^ak-willed  Egyptians^  but  it  is  likely  to  have  a 
place  of  honor  among  the  more  determined  na- 
tions, more  particularly  in  the  years  that  follow 
hard  upon  the  most  abundant  expression  of  their 
vitality.  And  this  is  why  we  find  the  golden 
days  of  the  drama  in  Greece  just  after  Salamis; 
in  Spain  not  long  after  the  conquest  of  Mexico 
and  Peru ;  in  England  about  the  time  of  the  defeat 
of  the  Armada;  and  in  France  when  Louis  XIV 
was  the  foremost  king  of  Europe.  Golden  days 
like  these  do  not  always  follow  the  periods  of 
23 


/ 


THE  ART  OF  THE   DRAMATIST 

energetic  self-expression  even  among  the  most 
vigorous  races,  or  else  there  would  have  been  a 
noble  dramatic  literature  in  English  in  the  nine- 
teenth century,  when  both  Great  Britain  and  the 
United  States  were  expanding  exuberantly,  but 
when  the  abundant  vitality  of  the  Americans  and 

rthe  British  found  other  outlets  than  the  theater. 
Yet  it  is  only  among  the  energetic  races  that  the 
,  drama  flourishes  vigorously.  If  any  people  begins 
to  relax  its  will  and  be  languid,  then  its  drama  is 
likely  soon  to  flag  also  and  to  become  enfeebled; 
and  this  is  what  seems  to  have  happened  in 
France  in  the  last  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. If  any  people,  virile  enough  in  other  ways, 
accepts  a  doctrine  benumbing  to  the  individual 
respj^tgjbility  of  man,  it  is  not  likely  to  de- 
velop a  drama;  and  this  is  perhaps  the  reason 
why  the  theater  did  not  establish  itself  among  the 
sturdy  Saracens,  who  bade  fair  more  than  once  to 
overpower  all  Europe,— those  valiant  warriors 
having  believed  in  foreor^ination  rather  than  in 
free-will. 

There  is  yet  another  corollary  of  this  law  of  M. 
Brunetiere's ;  or  at  least  there  is  a  chance  to  use  it 
here  to  elucidate  a  principle  often  insisted  upon 
by  another  French  critic.  The  late  Francisque 
Sarcey  maintained  that  every  subject  for  a  play, 
\  I  every  theme,  every  plot,  contained  certain  pos- 
'^Uible  scenes  which  the  playwright  was  bound  to 

24 


THE   ART   OF   THE   DRAMATIST 


present  on  the  stage.1  IThese  he  called  the  scenes 
a  f aire,  the  scenes  whiSh  had  to  be  done,  which 
could  net  be  shirked,  but  must  be  shown  in 
action.  ^He  asserted  that  the  spectator  vaguely 
desires  these  scenes,  and  is  dumbly  disappointed 
if  they  take  place  behind. closed  doors  and  if  they 
are  only  narrated.  I  Now,  if  the  drama  deals  with 
a  struggle,  then  trie  incidents  of  the  plot  most 
likely  to  arouse  and  sustain  the  interest  of  the 
audience  are  those  in  which  the  contending  forces 
are  seen  grappling  with  one  another;  and  these- 
are  therefore  the  scenes  a  faire,  the  scenes  that 
have  to  be  set  upon  the  stage  before  the  eyes  of 
the  spectators. 

Thus  it  is  in  the  presence  of  the  public  that 
Sophocles  brings  Oedipus  to  the  full  discovery  of 
the  fatal  secret  he  has  persisted  in  seeking.  Thus 
Shakspere  lets  us  behold  a  street-brawl  of  the 
Montagues  and  Capulets  before  making  us  wit- 
nesses of  the  love  at  first  sight  of  Romeo  and 
Juliet.  Nor  is  Shakspere  satisfied  to  have  some 
minor  character  tell  us  how  lago  dropped  the 
poison  of  jealousy  into  Othello's  ear:  he  makes 
us  see  it  with  our  own  eyes,— just  as  Moliere 
makes  us  hear  Tartuffe's  casuistical  pleading  with 
Orgon's  wife.  One  of  the  most  obvious  defects 
of  French  tragedy,  especially  in  its  decadence 
toward  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  is  the 
frequent  neglect  or  suppression  of  these  necessary 
25 


THE  ART   OF   THE    DRAMATIST 

yfrOes.and  the  constant  use  of  mere  messengers 
to  narrate  the  episodes  which  the  spectator  would 
rather  have  beheld  for  himself.  Victor  Hugo 
remarked  that  at  the  performance  of  a  tragedy  of 
this  type  the  audience  was  ever  ready  to  say  to 
the  dramatist  that  what  was  being  talked  about 
seemed  as  tho  it  might  be  interesting— *'theij 
why  not  let  us  see  it  for  ourselves  ?  " 


M.  Brunetiere's  law  helps  us  to  perceive  the 
necessary  subject-matter  of  the  drama;  and  M. 
Sarcey's  suggestion  calls  our  attention  to  the  neces- 
sary presentation  of  the  aciitest  moments  of  the 
struggle  before  our  eyes.  The  drama  has  other 
laws  also,  due  to  the  fact  that  it  is  an  art;  it 
has  its  conventions  by  which  alone  it  is  allowed 
to  differ  from  nature.  In  every  art  there  is  an 
implied  contract  between  the  artist  and  the  public, 
permitting  him  to  vary  from  the  facts  of  life,  and 
authorizing  him  to  translate  these  facts  and  to 
transpose  them  as  his  special  art  may  require. 
The  painter,  so  Mr.  John  La  Farge  has  reminded 
us,  arrests  and  stops  upon  a  little  piece  of  paper 
"  the  great  depth  and  perspective  of  the  world,  its 
motion,  its  never  resting " ;  while  the  sculptor 
transmutes  "this  soft,  moving,  fluctuating,  col- 
ored flesh  in  an  immovable,  hard,  rigid,  fixed, 
26 


■^bS^ucs..*  V-^ 


THE   ART   OF   THE   DRAMATIST 


colorless  material."  As  Goethe  once  tersely  | 
phrased  itT*'  Art  is  called  art  only  because  it  is  \ 
not  nature.      "'  -—— —-  \ 

The  conventions  of  the  drama,  its  permitted 
variations  from  the  facts  of  life,  are  some  of  them 
essential,  and  therefore  eternal;  and  some  of  them 
are  accidental  only,  and  therefore  temporary.  It 
is  a  condition  precedent  to  any  enjoyment  of  a 
play  that  the  fpuxtlL\\^aiLof  every  room  shall  bei 
removed,  so  that  we  can  see  what  is  going  on, ' 
also  that  the  actors  shall  keep  their  faces  turned 
toward  us,  and  that  they  shall  raise  their  voices  so 
that  we  can  hear  what  they  have  to  say.  It  is 
essential,  moreover,  that  the  dramatist,  having 
chosen  his  theme,  shall  present  it  to  us  void  of 
all  the  accessories  that  would  encurnber  it  in  real 
life,  showing  us  only  the  vital^£pi&odes,  omitting 
whatever  may  be  less  worthy  of  our  attention, 
and  ordering  his  plot  so  that  everything  is  clear 
before  our^es,  to  enable  us  to  understand  at 
once  every  fresh  development  as  the  story  unfolds 
itself.  And  as  the  action  is  thus  compacted  and 
hightened,  so  must  the  dialog  also  be  coiidej;i.sed 
and  strengthened.  It  is  only  a  brief  time  that  we 
have  to  spenB  Tn  the  theater;  and  therefore  must 
the  speech  of  every  character  be  stripped  of  the 
tautology,  of  the  digressions,  of  the  irrelevancies 
which  dilute  every-day  conversation. 

These  things  are  essential,  and  we  find  them 
27 


THE  ART   OF   THE   DRAMATIST 

alike  in  the  ancient  drama  and  in  the  modern.  But 
it  is  a  matter  of  choice  whether  the  characters  shall 
employ  prose  or  verse,  Racine  using  rime,  Calde- 
ron  using  assonance,  and  Shakspere  using  prose 
or  verse  or  even  rime  as  occasion  serves.  Verse 
and  rime  and  assonance  are  all  arbitrary  variations 
from  the  customary  speech  of  every  day,  but  so 
also  is  the  picked  and  polished  prose  of  Sheridan, 
of  Augier,  and  of  Ibsen.  Still  further  removed 
from  the  mere  fact  is  the  convention  of  the  lyric 
drama—that  all  the  characters  shall  sing,  as  tho 
song  was  their  sole  means  of  expression ;  and  the 
convention  of  pantomime— that  all  the  characters 
shall  communicate  with  one  another,  and  reveal 
their  feelings  to  us,  by  gestures  only,  as  tho  the 
art  of  speech  had  not  yet  been  elaborated. 

Temporary  and  accidental  conventions  seem 
natural  to  us  if  we  happen  to  be  accustomed  to 
them,  but  they  strike  us  as  grossly  unnatural 
when  they  are  unfamiliar.  We  do  not  object  if 
a  flimsy  frame  of  canvas  is  lowered  before  our 
eyes  to  represent  the  castle  of  Elsinore,  or  if  a 
stone  wall  suddenly  becomes  transparent  that 
Faust  may  have  a  vision  of  Margaret.  But  we 
are  inclined  to  smile  at  the  black-robed  attendant 
who  hovers  about  the  Japanese  actor  to  provide 
a  fan  or  a  cushion,  and  who  is  supposed  to  be 
invisible  or  even  non-existent.  We  should  be 
taken  aback  if,  after  a  murder  was  committed  off 
28 


UN 

THE    ART   OF   THE    DRATVIATIST 

the  Stage,  a  door  suddenly  flew  open,  revealing 
the  criminals  and  the  corpse  posed  in  a  living 
picture;  and  yet  this  is  said  to  have  been  a  device 
of  the  Greek  theater.  And  we  should  laugh  out- 
right if  we  could  listen  to  one  of  the  medieval 
mysteries  as  they  were  acted  in  Portugal,  when 
we  heard  the  devil  speaking  Spanish,  as  it  was 
always  the  custom  of  the  Portuguese  to  represent 
him. 

It  is  of  these  conventions  that  Sir  Joshua  Rey- 
nolds was  thinking  when  he  asserted  that  "in 
theatric  representation  great  allowance  must  al- 
ways be  made  for  the  place  in  which  the  exhibi- 
tion is  represented,  for  the  surrounding  company, 
the  lighted  candles,  the  scenes  visibly  shifted  in 
our  sight,  and  the  language  of  blank  verse  so 
different  from  common  English,  which  merely 
as  English  must  appear  surprising  in  the  mouths 
of  Hamlet  and  of  all  the  court  and  natives  of 
Denmark.  These  allowances  are  made ;  but  their 
being  made  puts  an  end  to  all  manner  of  decep- 
tion." This  last  assertion  we  must  qualify,  since 
actual  deception  is  no  more  the  aim  of  the  dra- 
matic art  than  of  the  pictorial;  in  either  case  the 
illusion  is  ours  only  because  we  are  willing  that 
it  should  be.  But  when  the  painter  requires  us 
to  make  allowances  for  **  the  place  in  which  the 
exhibition  is  represented,"  and  also  for  *'the  sur- 
rounding company,"  he  names  two  of  the  three 
29 


THE  ART   OF   THE   DRAMATIST 

conditions  under  which  the  playwright  has  to 
work  perforce. 

VI 

As  a  drama  is  intended  to  be  performed  by 
actors,  in  a  theater,  and  before  an  audience,  the 

(dramatist,  as  he  composes,  must  always  bear  in 
mind  the  ^l.ay,ei:s*.the  play house^  and  the  play- 
goers. ^  The  lyric  poet  needs  to  take  thought  only 
for  the  fit  expression  of  his  mood  of  the  moment; 
and  even  the  epic  poet,  if  haply  he  had  a  patron, 
could  be  independent  of  his  contemporaries.  But 
no  dramatic  poet  can  be  satisfied  until  he  has  seen 
his  work  in  the  theater  itself,  where  his  characters 
are  made  flesh  and  blood  before  his  eyes,  and 
where  he  can  feel  the  thrill  of  the  audience  at  his 
commuiiicable  emotion. 

Of  these  three  conditions  in  conscious  con- 
formity with  which  the  dramatist  labors,  probably 
the  least  variable  is  the  personality  of  the  actor. 
The  playhouse  has  taken  many  shapes  in  differ- 
ent climes,  and  the  spectator  rnust  change  with 
civilization  itself;  whereas  the  histrionic  tempera- 
ment is  very  much  the  same  throughout  the  ages. 
It  is  well  to  remember  that  the  actor  must  always 
do  his  work,  not  in  private,  like  the  poet  or  the 
painter,  but  in  public,  like  the  orator;  and  that 
the  instrument  of  his  art  is  always  his  own  per- 
son. These  are  reasons  why  it  is  hard  for  him 
30 


THE   ART   OF  THE   DRAMATIST 

to  escape  self-consciousness.     For  the  opportu- 
nity  to  perform  he  is  dependent  on  the  dramatist, 
altho  he  cannot  help  believing  that  he  must  under- 
stand the  principles  of  his  own  art  better  than 
any  one  else.     This  is  a  reason  why  he  may  seem 
sometimes  intolerant  or  overmasterful.     But  he 
loves  his  art  loyally,  and  clutches  eagerly  at  every 
chance  to  exercise  it  and  to  develop  his  own  vir- 
tuosity.    This  loyalty  of  the  actor  the  dramatists 
have  always  relied  on;  and  his  virtuosity  they 
have  always  been  glad  to  utilize.     So  it  need 
surprise  no  one  to  be  told  that  Sophocles  was 
said  to  write  his  plays  for  a  given  actor,  just  as 
M.  Sardou  has  composed  certain  of  his  pieces  to  I 
fit  a  given  actress.     If  we  find  that  Hamlet  is  I 
getting  fat  and  scant  of  breath,  we  may  wonder ' 
whether  this  was  not,  perhaps,  because  Burbage 
was  putting  on  flesh  about  the  time  when  Shak- 
spere  was  revising  the  tragedy;  and  if  we  dis- 
cover that  a  certain  character  in  one  of  Moliere's 
comedies  has  a  limp,  we  may  surmise  that  this  is  - 
merely  because  the  part  was  to  be  played  by 
B4iart,  the  author's  lame  brother-in-law.     It  is  \ 
this  dependence  of  the  dramaturgic  artist  on  the 
histrionic  which  makes  the  drama  so  complex  an    ' 
art.     The  work  of  the  dramatist  can  be  revealed 
completely  only  by  the  labor  of  the  actors;  and  , 
one  reason  why  there  was  no  masterpiece  of  the  • 
drama  in  the  middle  ages  is  to  be  found  in  the  I 
3> 


\ 


I 

L 


THE   ART   OF   THE   DRAMATIST 

I  fact  that  the  medieval  actors  were  all  of  them  only 
I  amateurs. 

However  little  the  psychology  of  the  tragic 
comedians  has  changed  in  the  succeeding  cen- 
turies, there  have  been  many  modifications  in  the 
shape  and  size  and  circumstances  of  the  theaters 
in  which  they  perform;  and  these  modifications 
have  exerted  a  potent  influence  on  the  successive 
forms  of  the  drama.  We  can  see  one  cause  for 
the  massive  simplicity  of  Egyptian  statuary  in 
the  fact  that  it  had  to  be  wrought  in  tough 
granite  and  in  obstinate  porphyry;  and  we  can 
ascribe  to  the  more  delicate  Parian  marble  a  part, 
at  least,  of  the  exquisite  perfection  of  Greek 
sculpture,  while  the  capricious  grotesquery  of 
carving  in  the  medieval  cathedral  may  be  due  to 
the  ease  with  which  the  friable  sandstone  of 
northern  Europe  could  be  worked,  f  Perhaps  the 
severe  dignity  of  Greek  tragedy  wVs  caused"  by 
the  imm£ns£_size ^ofL-the  Theater  of  Dionysus, 
where  many  thousand  citizens  gathered  under 
the  open  sky;  and,  in  like  manner,  may  not  some 
portion  of  the  rapidity  and  variety  of  the  Eliza- 
bethan drama  have  been  due  to  the  unadorned 
platform  thrust  out  into  the  yard  of  the  Globe 
Theater  ? 

The  tragedies  of  Shakspere  were  performed  by 
daylight  in  a  playhouse  modeled  on  the  court- 
yard of  an  inn  and  not  wholly  roofed;  the  com- 
32 


THE    ART   OF   THE   DRAMATIST 

edies  of  Moliere  were  brought  out  in  an  altered 
tennis-court,  on  a  shallow  stage  lighted  by  can- 
dles ;  the  *  School  for  Scandal '  was  written  for 
the  huge  Drury  Lane  Theater,  with  its  broad 
proscenium-arch,  dimly  lit  by  flaring  oil-lamps; 
and  the  '  Gay  Lord  Quex '  was  produced  in  one 
of  the  smaller  theaters  of  London,  with  a  pro- 
scenium like  a  picture-frame,  brilliantly  illumined 
by  the  electric  light.  After  these  examples  it  is 
absurd  to  deny  that  the  condition  of  the  building 
in  which  a.  play  is  performed  may  modify  the 
structure  of  the  play  itself.^ 
V  Far  more  powerful  than  the  influence  of  the 
\  theater  or  of  the  actor  upon  the  dramatist  is 
r<the  influence  of  the  audience,  an  influence  not  on 
(the  form  of  the  play,  but  on  its  substance.  As 
those  "  who  live  to  please  must  please  to  live,"  so 
the  play  must  be  what  the  audience  makes  it.  If 
the  spectators  are  all  coarse  brutes,  the  drama 
will  be  coarse  and  brutal;  and  if  they  are  fun- 
loving  and  free  from  sickly  sentimentality,  then 
it  is  possible  for  the  playwright  to  indulge  in 
romantic-comedy.  The  drama  is  thus,  of  neces- 
sity, the  ruQ^t^  democratic  of  the  arts ;  and  any 
attempt  to  organize  it  on  an  aristocratic  basis- 
such  as  Goethe  ventured  upon  in  Weimar— is 
foredoomed  toj^ilure.  The  drama  appeals  al- 
ways to  the  broad  public,  and  never  to  any  self- 
styled  upper  class.  A  great  poet  may  Be  haughty 
^3 


THE   ART   OF   THE   DRAMATIST 

and  reserved,  and  ready  to  retire  into  an  ivory 
tower;  but  a  great  dramatist  must  needs  have  an 
understanding  of  hisj^jow-man ;  he  must  have 
toleration  and,  above  all,  sympathy. 

The  influence  of  the  spectator  upon  the  play- 
wright is  like  the  pressure  of  the  atmosphere  upon 
man:  he  may  never  even  think  about  it,  but 
all  his  organs  are  adjusted  to  it  none  the  less. 
Schlegel  remarked  that  **  much  must  always  de- 
pend on  the  capacities  and  humors  of  the  audi- 
ence, and,  consequently,  on  the  national  character 
in  general,  and  the  particular  degree  of  mental 
culture  " ;  and  he  might  have  gone  further  and  ^ 
asserted  that  the  particular  degree  of  moral  culture 
was  equally  important.  Before  a  Greek  audience 
the  husband  of  Alcestis  could,  without  losing 
sympathy,  accept  his  wife's  offer  to  die  in  his 
stead— altho  to  us  the  fellow  seems  a  pitiful 
coward.  Before  a  Spanish  audience  the  husband 
who  is  the  *  Physician  of  his  Own  Honor'  could, 
without  losing  sympathy,  kill  the  wife  whom  he 
knows  to  be  innocent,  because  there  is  k  scandal 
about  her— altho  to  us  the  man  is  merely  a  mur- 
derer. This  sympathy  of  the  audience  is  what 
even  the  most  primitive  playwright  is  always 
seeking.  The  Australian  pantomime  of  the  cattle- 
raid  and  the  sham-fight  would  have  failed  to 
please  if  the  natives  had  not  at  last  beaten  off 
the  white  men.  In  his  *  Medea '  Euripides  appa- 
34 


THE   ART   OF   THE   DRAMATIST 

rently  brought  in  Aegeus  mainly  that  he  might 
flourish  a  claptrap  eulogy  of  Athens,  the  city 
where  the  play  was  to  be  acted ;  and  in  '  Henry 
V '  Shakspere  descends  to  a  hyperbole  of  praise 
of  England,  which  in  the  mouth  of  any  one  else 
might  sound  like  the  acfne  of  jingoism. 

The  dramatist  does  not  appeal  to  the  spectators 
as  individuals;  he  appeals  to  the  audience  as  a 
whole,  the  audience  having  a  collective  soul  which 
is  not  quite  the  same  as  the  sum  total  of  their 
several  souls.  A  crowd,  as  such,  is  not  a  mere 
composite-photograph  of  its  constituent  persons ; 
it  has  a  certain  personality  of  its  own.  By 
sheer  force  of  juxtaposition  the  characteristics 
which  the  majority  have  in  common  are  made 
more  powerful,  while  the  divergent  characteris- 
tics of  the  individuals  are  subordinated  or  elimi- 
nated. When  he  is  one  of  a  multitude  a  man 
feels  and  thinks  for  the  moment  like  the  multitude, 
altho  when  he  is  alone  again  he  may  wonder 
why  he  yielded.  As  the  dramatists  must  strive  to 
arouse  the  emotions  of  the  multitude,  they  cannot 
consider  the  special  Hkings  or  the  special  know- 
ledgeof  any  single  man  or  of  any  minorgroup  of 
men.  They  must  try  totriid  the  gl  eafesfcommon 
denominator  of  the  throng.  I  That  is  to  say,  they 
must  ever  seek  the  universal— for  it  is  only  at 
their  peril  that  they  can  use  the  particuja^ 


35 


THE   ART   OF   THE   DRAMATIST 
VII 

Desiring  to  please  the  audience  as  a  whole,  the 
dramatists  are  always  ready  to  accept  its  verdict 
as  final.  There  is  no  immediate  appeal  from  this 
judgment,  rendered  in  the  theater  itself,  whether 
it  is  favorable  or  adverse.  As  Regnard  makes 
the  comedian  say,  *'  It  is  the  public  which  deter- 
mines the  fate  of  works  of  wit— and  our  fate; 
and  when  we  see  it  come  in  crowds  to  a  new 
play  we  judge  that  the  piece  is  good,  and  we  do 
not  care  for  any  other  assurance."  And  here  the 
comedian  was  indisputably  right;  the  approval  of 
the  public  is  the  first  proof  of  worthy  success, 
^for  there  are  no  good  plays  save  those  which  have 
7  been  applauded  in  the  playhouse.  The  recog- 
nized masterpieces  of  the  drama  have  all  of  them 
been  popular  in  their  own  day.  Sophocles  and 
Shakspere,  Lope  de  Vega  and  Moliere,  Sheridan 
and  Beaumarchais,  were,  every  one  of  them, 
widely  appreciated  by  their  contemporaries. 
True  it  is,  also,  that  there  have  been  other  play- 
wrights whose  contemporary  success  was  unde- 
niable and  whose  fame  is  now  faded— Hey  wood, 
for  example,  and  Kotzebue  and  Scribe,  in  whose 
works  posterity  has  failed  to  find  the  element  of 
permanency. 

Altho  the  works  of  Heywood  and  Kotzebue 
and  Scribe  call  for  no  consideration  from  a  lover 
J6 


THE   ART   OF   THE   DRAMATIST 

of  literature  only,  since  purely  literary  merit  is 
just  what  they  lack,  they  still  demand  attention 
from  a  student  of  dramatic  literature,  who  can  spy 
out  in  them  the  selfsame  qualities  which  gave 
immediate  success  also  to  the  masterpieces  of  the 
great  dramatists.  The  drama  is  an  art  which  has 
developed  slowly  and  steadily,  and  which  is  still 
alive;  its  history  has  the  same  essential  unity,  the 
same  continuity,  that  we  are  now  beginning  to 
see  more  clearly  in  the  history  of  the  whole 
world  Its  principles,  like  the  principles  of  every 
other  art^re  eternal  and  unchanging,  whatever 
strange  aspects  the  art  may  assume.  As  history 
is  saiH  to  be  only  past  politics,  and  politics  to  be 
in  fact  only  present  history,  so  in  dramatic  litera- 
ture what  once  was  helps  us  to  understand  what 
now  is,  and  what  now  is .  aids  us  to  appreciate 
what  once.was.  .If  only  we  could  behold  all  the 
links  weshould  be  able  to  trace  an  unbroken  chain 
from  the  crudest  mythological  pantomime  of 
primitive  man  down  to  the  severest  problem-play 
of  the  stern  Scandinavian,  whose  example  has 
been  so  stimulating  to  the  modern  stage. 


37 


/ 


II.     GREEK  TRAGEDY 


THE  distinguished  French  engineers  who 
crossed  the  Atlantic  in  1893  to  study  the 
wonders  of  the  World's  Fair  in  Chicago  paused 
for  a  while  in  New  York  on  their  way,  and  were 
taken  around  the  city  to  visit  the  most  notable 
monuments  of  their  art  that  the  American  metrop- 
olis had  then  to  show.  At  the  moment  when 
the  boat  on  which  they  were  embarked,  turning 
out  of  the  North  River,  rounded  the  Battery  and 
brought  them  at  last  in  full  view  of  the  Brooklyn 
Bridge  swung  high  in  air  beyond  their  heads, 
one  of  my  scientific  colleagues  at  Columbia  Uni- 
versity happened  to  be  standing  by  the  side  of 
the  foremost  of  the  foreign  visitors  as  they  were 
captivated  by  the  sudden  vision  of  that  splendid 
span  thrown  boldly  across  an  arm  of  the  sea. 
"  How  beautiful  it  is!"  cried  the  Frenchman  at 
once. — Comme c'est  beau  !  Then,  a  moment  later, 
he  added,  "  How  well  done  it  xsV —Comme  c'est 
Men  fait!  And  finally,  after  he  had  looked  long 
38 


Cr^EEK   TRAGEDY 

and  steadily,  he  said  with  redoubled  admiration, 
"How  well  it  is  t.iought  out\"—Comme  c'est 
Men  etudU! 

Have  we  not  here,  in  these  sincere  utterances, 
simply  the  three  stages  of  admiration  through 
which  the  expert  must  always  pass  in  the  stimu- 
lating presence  of  the  consummate  work  of  art  ? 
Its  pure  beauty  will  strike  him  at  once;  then  he 
perceives  the  masterful  skill  of  the  craftsman  who 
wrought  it;  and  last  of  all  he  recognizes  the  solid 
labor  underlying  the  skill  and  the  beauty.  And 
under  no  other  circumstances  do  we  pass  so  cer- 
tainly through  these  stages  of  admiration  as  when 
we  give  ourselves  to  the  contemplation  of  the 
masterpieces  of  the  Greeks.  It  matters  little 
what  the  art  or  what  the  scale  of  the  work,  unfail- 
ing felicity  is  what  we  find,  and  easy  spontaneity, 
whether  it  is  the  tiny  Temple  of  Nike  or  the 
Parthenon  itself,  whether  it  is  a  mere  Tanagra 
figurine  or  the  Winged  Victory  of  Samothrace, 
whether  it  is  a  late  idyl  of  Theocritus  or  a  full- 
orbed  tragedy  of  Sophocles. 

Yet  it  would  be  very  uncritical  if  we  were  to 
assume  the  Greeks  to  be  so  marvelously  gifted  by 
nature  that  they  could  grasp  perfection  at  the  first 
brave  clutch  for  it.  However  incomparable  the 
final  achievements  of  the  Greek  people  in  sculp- 
ture, in  architecture,  and  in  the  drama,  the  be- 
ginnings of  these  arts  were  as  humble  in  Greece 

39 


GREEK   TRAGEDY 

as  anywhere  else.  Not  a  fev;  temples  must  have 
been  put  together  more  or  jess  clumsily,  before 
the  Parthenon  could  raise  its  superb  beauty  on 
the  steep  Acropolis;  and  many  a  hundred  of  the 
ruder  archaic  statues  served  to  train  the  eye  and 
the  hand  of  the  sculptors  before  they  could  com- 
pass the  power  and  the  grace  of  the  Hermes. 
The  masterpieces  survive  for  our  constant  delight; 
while  the  primitive  attempts  that  failed  to  satisfy 
even  the  crude  taste  of  those  who  wrought  them 
—these  have  vanished  or  are  neglected.  We  are 
now  coming  to  see,  however,  that  these  earlier 
efforts  are  invaluable  atds  for  the  fuller  apprecia- 
tion of  the  final  masterpieces.  As  Haeckel  has 
reminded  us,  the  mind  of  an  educated  man  of  the 
highest  civilized  races  is  "  the  last  link  of  a  long 
ancestral  chain,  and  the  innumerable  older  and 
inferior  links  are  indispensable  for  its  proper 
understanding."  Adequately  to  esteem  the  true 
value  of  Sophoclean  tragedy,  we  need  to  know 
the  obscure  root  from  which  it  sprang,  and  to 
trace  its  growth  from  the  prehistoric  past. 

II 

i^  A  RECENT  investigator  into  the  beginnings  of 
the  arts,  Professor  Hirn,  holds  the  drama  to  be 
the  earliest  of  them  all;  and  he  goes  so  far  as 
to  suggest  that  a  rude  pantomime,  accompanied 
40 


GREEK  TRAGEDY 

perhaps  by  a  dance,  or  by  a  rhythmic  chant,  may 
be  older  even  than  language  itself.  Very  early 
among  the  Greeks  we  get  hints  of  a  miracle-play  w 
in  honor  of  Demeter;  and  perhaps  in  this  we  may 
see  a  germ  of  the  later  drama,  since  whatever 
may  have  preceded  it  is  now  hopelessly  beyond 
our  knowledge,  altho  we  may  hazard  a  guess 
that  it  had  been  evolved  slowly  out  of  a  panto- 
mimic dance,  probably  at  first  without  spoken 
words.  It  was  in  the  springtime  that  the  festi- 
val of  Demeter  was  celebrated ;  and  in  the  fall, 
when  the  grapes  were  trodden  out,  the  vine-clad 
Dionysus  had  his  turn  with  revelry  and  joyous 
song  and  orgiastic  dance.  (\t  is  from  religious  ^ 
exercises,  set  off  always  with  music  and  often  ^ . 
with  dancing,  that  the  drama  has  evolved  itself 
in  almost  every  literature— in  Chinese,  for  ex- 
ample, and  again  in  Sanskrit.  \  The  development 
of  a  true  drama  does  not  alWays  take  place— ap- 
parently not  in  Hebrew  literature,  for  one;  but  if 
it  does,  then  this  is  its  source  always.  "  By  the 
simultaneous  employment  of  mimicry,  song, 
speech,  and  instrumental  music,"  so  Professor 
Letourneau  declares,  (*  the  opera-ballet  of  the 
early  a^es  was  the  form  of  esthetic^  inost  fitted 
stronf^ly  to  impress  spectators  and  actors,  and  at 
the  S'lme  time  to  satisfy  a  very  lively  psychical 
warW  that  of  projecting  mental  images  outward, 
of  pi  Producing,  with  all  the  relief  of  reality,  what 
4» 


/t 


GREEK  TRAGEDY 

exists  in  the  bmin  only  in  the  state  of  recollec- 
tion or  desire.  (  The  civilized  theater  is  only  the 
natural  development  of  this  opera-ballet;  and  it 
preserves  an  equal  attraction  and  an  equal  power 
even  after  losing  the  lyrical  form  which  dated 
from  its  origin." 

In  the  civilized  theater  of  the  Greeks,  the 
drama  never  wholly  gave  up  the  lyrical  form  it 
inherited  from  the  remote  ancestor  which  M. 
Letourneau  terms  the  opera-ballet  of  savage  tribes. 
It  grew  out  of  one  or  another  of  the  Dionysiac 
commemorations;  of  this  we  may  be  certain, 
altho  we  must  be  doubtful  as  to  the  successive 
stages  of  its  expansion.  The  information  we  get 
from  Aristotle  is  painfully  summary.  **  Tra- 
gedy," he  tells  us,  "as  also  comedy,  was  at  first 
mere  improvisation.  The  one  originated  with  the 
leaders  of  the  dithyramb,  the  other  with  those  of 
the  phallic  songs.  .  .  .  Tragedy  advanced  by 
slow  degrees:  each  new  element  was  in  turn 
eveloped."  The  ditjjjjfamb  was  a  swinging 
hymn  to  Dionysus  sS^  l)y  a  chorus  of  youths 
sometimes  somewhat  under  the  influence  of  the 
new  wine.  At  first  this  chorus  was  but  a  band 
of  revelers,  with  an  impromptu  chant  fitted  rudely 
to  the  dance  they  were  devisinj  spontaneously. 
The  most  striking  of  these  impromptu  (iants 
would  tend  to  become  traditional,  thereairAo 
be  varied  from  only  on  hints  from  the  mor^i  in- 
42 


GREEK   TRAGEDY 

ventive  of  the  young  fellows— much  as  to-day, 
in  a  negro  camp-meeting,  we  may  hear  new  words 
fitted  to  an  .air  which  itself  is  in  process  of  modi- 
fication. 

/,  In  time  the  most  ingenious  member  of  the 
chorus  wpuld  be  recognized  as  the  leader,  and 
he  would  be  expected  to  *'  line  out "  the  songs 
and  to  conduct  the  dance  to  the  music  of  the 
flute.  We  are  told  that  it  was  Arion  who  earliest 
of  all  wrote  out  the  lyrics  which  had  hitherto 
been  more  or  less  improvised,  and,  to  balance 
them,  stropjie  and  antistrophe.  Arion  also  it 
may  have  been  who  first  put  the  singers  into  the 
costume  of  satyrs,  making  them  a  band  of  fol- 
lowers accompanying  Dionysus  himself.  Their 
faces  were  stained  with  the  wine-lees,  in  honor  of 
the  god  perhaps,  and  yet  it  may  be  that  this  was 
to  give  a  fuller  freedom  to  the  individual,  embold- 
ened by  this  elementary  disguise— just  as  an 
American  boy  is  far  less  shamefaced  when  he 
uses  burnt  cork  to  black  up  as  a  negro-minstrel 
than  when  he  takes  part  in  any  ordinary  private 
theatricals. 

The  differentiation  of  the  leader  from  the  chorus 
would  allow  a  colloquy  between  the  leader  and 
the  chorus;  and  the  leader  might  in  time  be 
moved  to  act  out  a  part  of  the  legend  of  the  god's 
life  while  the  chorus  commented  lyrically  or  else.. 
,    took  part  in  the  action.     But  the  most  important 

43 


GREEK    TRAGEDY 

Step  remained  to  be  taken ;  and  this  is  ascribed  to 
'yj^spis.  The  poet  who  was  already  the  leader 
became  also  an  actor,  not  always  personating  a 
single  character,  but  assuming  several  characters 
in  turn.  To  enable  him  to  disguise  himself  he 
wore  a  different  mask  for  each  of  the  several 
characters  he  undertook,  this  device  being  sug- 
gested to  him  perhaps  by  the  fact  that  the  priest 
of  Demeter  always  wore  a  mask  at  her  mysteries. 
From  the  moment  when  the  play  was  thus 
peopled  by  several  characters,  even  tho  they 
were  presented  one  after  the  other  and  never 
two  together,  a  plot  was  possible,  however 
slight:  a  complete  action  could  be  shown,  how- 
ever elementary ;  and  the  struggle  essential  to  the 
true  dramatic  form  could  be  represented  before 
the  spectators  to  arouse  their  sympathy. 
VJhe  poet-leader  of  the  chorus  having  been  devel- 
oped into  an  actor,  the  chorus  promptly  raised  an- 
other of  their  members  to  take  his  place  as  their ' 
chief,  just  as  we  see^^in  the  history  of  modern  music 
how  the  conductor  differentiated  himself  slowly 
from  the  other  instrumentalists,  and  how,  when 
he  stood  wholly  apart  from  them,  one  of  the  first 
violins  was  designated  in  his  stead  a.*:  concert- 
master.  ^The  lyrics  of  the  chorus  existed  there- 
after not  only  for  their  own  sake,  but  also  that 
they  might  fill  out  the  time  while  the  actor  was 
making  his  exchange  of  one  character  for  another.% 
44 


/ 


iREEK   TRAGEDY 

This  increasing  complexity  came  a  little  before  or 
a  little  after  another  step  in  advance;  the  play 
itself  was  no  longer  improvised  on  the  spur  of 
the  moment;  it  was  composed  careifully,  and 
written  out  and  committed  to  memory  both  by 
the  actor  and  by  the  chorus.  The  purely  popu- 
lar entertainment  extemporized  annually  at  a  vin- 
tage-festival began  to  be  a  work  of  art;  and 
literature  came  to  the  aid  of  the  theater.  And 
at  about  the  same  time  this  elementary  drama, 
destined  to  so  splendid  a  development,  gave  up 
its  nomadic  career  and  established  itself  in 
Athens. 

"  The  country  is  lyric,"  so  Longfellow  declared, 
**and  the  town  dramatic."  The  lyrist  may  re- 
lieve his  own  feelings  in  song  with  no  need  for 
a  listener;  but  the  dramatist  must  conceive  his 
utterances  always  with  a  consciousness  of  their 
effect  when  repeated  before  a  crowd.  It  may  be 
that  Thespis,  who  was  an  Icarian,  headed  a  com- 
pany of  strollers  performing  at  village-festivals, 
and  fixing  itself  finally  in  Athens  at  the  invitation 
of  Pisistratus,  the  enlightened  despot  then  striv- 
ing to  make  his  city  the  home  of  all  the  arts. 
At  first  Thespis  gave  his  performances  as  a 
private  enterprise,  much  as  Moliere  did  when  he 
brought  back  to  Paris  the  company  he  had 
trained  during  his  long  years  of  wandering  in  the 
provinces.  But  the  Greeks  liked  everything  to 
45 


GREEK   TRAGEDS 

be  done  decently  and  in  order,  and  they  joyed 
always  in  a  competition  of  any  kind.  These  are 
probably  the  reasons  why  the  state  took  over  the 
control  of  the  drama.  Thereafter  tragedy  was 
performed  at  the  City  Dionysia,  the  great  spring- 
festival  of  the  Athenians,  when  the  visitors 
thronged  there  from  all  parts  of  Greece.  In  the 
course  of  time  different  dramatists  were  invited 
/  to  present,  each  on  separate  days,  groups  of 
/  tragedies;  and  the  cost  of  producing  each  group 
was  borne  by  a  rich  citizen,  who  paid  for  the 
training  of  the  chorus,  for  the  costumes,  for  the 
musicians,  and  for  all  the  accessories  of  adequate 
stage-management.  There  was  in  Athens  then 
a  high  sense  of  civic  duty,  as,  indeed,  there  seems 
to  be  now,  when  the  stranger  marvels  to  note 
how  many  public  buildings  have  of  late  been 
given  to  the  city  by  one  or  another  of  her  loyal 
sons. 

The  early  dithyrambic  chorus  performed  its 
evolutions  arouna  an  altar  to  Dionysus,  in  the 
market-place,  probably;  and  when  the  leader 
began  to  hold  colloquies  with  his  fellows,  a 
platform  was  put  up  for  him  in  the  center  of  the 
circle  and  at  the  side  of  the  altar.  When  the 
leader  became  an  actor,  playing  various  parts  one 
after  the  other,  a  booth  of  skins  was  erected  be- 
hind the  platform,  so  that  he  could  change  his 
mask  and  his  costume  out  of  sight  of  the  specta- 
46 


GREEK  TRAGEDY 

tors.  But  as  this  booth  would  surely  hide  him 
from  the  view  of  some  of  those  standing  all 
around,  the  circle  of  spectators  was  broken  at  one 
point,  to  which  the  booth  and  the  platform  were 
moved  back.  In  front  of  this  new  focus  of  at- 
tention at  least  two  thirds  of  the  circular  space 
remained  free  for  the  movements  of  the  chorus. 
Beyond  this  open  area,  which  was  known  as  the 
orchestra,  the  seats  for  the  spectators  were  fanned 
out  on  three  sides.  The  low  platform  whereon 
the  actor  appeared  in  front  of  the  booth  was  the 
only  stage,  and  there  was  no  scenery. 

The  circling  seats  for  the  audience  were  but 
temporary  erections,  perhaps  not  unlike  the  tiers 
of  benches  seen  in  our  traveling  circuses;  and 
they  were  not  always  stable.  Probably  this  is 
one  reason  why  the  market-place  was  abandoned 
for  a  hollow  of  the  hill  that  towered  high  over  the 
city.  At  the  bottom  a  circular  space  was  leveled 
to  serve  as  an  orchestra,  and  above  it,  in  concen- 
tric rows  up  the  sides  of  the  curving  slope,  seats 
of  wood  or  of  stone  were  arranged.  As  the 
spectators  were  now  so  placed  that  every  one 
had  a  full  view  of  the  whole  orchestra,  there  was 
no  longer  any  need  for  the  platform  on  which  the 
actor  had  stood.  IThe  booth  of  skins  was  re- 
placed by  a  more  commodious  wooden  hut,  in 
which  the^costumes  of  the  actor  would  be  better 
protected  from  the  weather,  and  the  roof  of 
47 


/ 


GREEK  TRAGEDY 

which  could  be  utilized  later  in  the  development 
of  the  drama  by  a  god  looking  down  on  men 
below,  or  by  a  watchman  on  the^housetop— very 
much  as  the  gallery  over  the  stage  was  made 
serviceable  by  the  Elizabethan  playwrights. 


Ill 

Very  conjectural  indeed  must  be  any  attempt 
to  set  forth  the  successive  steps  by  which  a  song- 
and-dance  of  village  revelers  grew  into  a  lofty 
tragedy  of  a  stateliness  worthy  of  the  noble  city 
where  it  was  at  last  established.  Arion  is  no 
more  than  a  myth,  and  Thespis  is  at  best  only  a 
tradition ;  but  Aeschylus  is  a  fact  at  last.  Ut  was 
Aeschylus  who,  so  Aristotle  informs  us,  "first 
introduced  a  seg^nd  actor;  he  diminished  the 
importance  of  the  chorus,  and  assigned  the  lead- 
ing part  to  the  dialog.  1  As  the  first  actor  could 
personate  several  characters,  so  also  could  the 
second ;  and  thereafter  the  dramatist  was  at  liberty 
to  people  his  play  as  amply  as  he  chose,  subject 
to  the  sole  limitation  that  only  two  of  the  per- 
sonages of  the  drama  should  appear  at  the  same 
time.  '  Aeschylus  could  well  afford  to  diminish 
the  importance  of  the  chorus,  since  he  had  now 
the  power  to  put  before  the  spectators  the  two 
opposing  characters  in  whom  was  embodied  the 
struggle  which  was  the  backbone  of  the  plot. 
48 


GREEK  TRAGEDY 

When  the  actually  dramatic  was  thus  made  pos- 
sible the  poet  had  less  need  of  the  merely  lyric. 
With  the  aid  of  the  two  actors  he  could  present 
in  action  the  culminating  episodes  of  the  essen- 
tial struggle,  the  scenes  d  faire  (to  use  Sarcey's 
invaluable  term),  the  scenes  that  must  be  shown 
if  the  story  is  to  hold  the  interest  of  the  audience. 
The  Greek  dramatic  poets  never  wholly  relin- 
quished the  lyric,  out  of  which  the  dramatic  was 
evolving  itself;  but  the  former  became  less  and 
less  important  as  the  latter  came  slowly  to  an 
understanding  of  its  own  powers  and  possibili- 
ties. When  we  arrange  the  extant  tragedies  in 
chronological  order  we  cannot  fail  to  discover 
several  stages  of  artistic  growth,  from  the  semi- 
lyric  *  Suppliants '  of  Aeschylus  to  the  perfectly 
proportioned  and  vitally  dramatic  *  Oedipus '  of 
Sophocles,  with  a  later  decline  almost  into  melo- 
drama in  the  'Medea'  of  Euripides.  Semi-lyric 
the  ' Suppliants  Ts,  and  only  semi-dramatic;  it 
seems  to  represent  Greek  tragedy  as  it  was  before 
Aeschylus  had  discovered  how  to  bring  out  the 
dramatic  elements  inherent  in  his  theme.  To  the 
chorus  was  given*  more  than  half  of  the  words 
spoken;  and  if  only  a  few  slight  modifications 
were  made,  a  single  actor  could  take  all  the  char- 
acters in  turn.  It  was  possibly  the  very  first  play 
ever  performed  on  the  site  of  the  stately  Theater 
of  Dionysus,  to  be  erected  more  than  a  century 
49 


GREEK   TRAGEDY 

later.  It  was  given  in  the  rough-and-ready  be- 
ginning of  a  theater  which  consisted  of  tiers  of 
seats  circling  above  a  hastily  leveled  orchestra, 
at  the  bacji  of  which  was  a  shed  for  the  actors  to 
dress  inX  Stage  there  was  none,  for  none  was 
needed;  and  scenery  there  was  none,  for  no  one 
could  yet  foresee  the  possibility  of  any  such 
thing. 

Into  the  orchestra  file  the  Suppliants,  the  play 
taking  its  name  from  the  chorus  which  repre- 
sented the  daughters  of  Danaus,  who  have 
escaped  to  Argos  from  enforced  marriage  with 
their  cousins.  On  entering  they  chant  a  prayer, 
and  then  appears  their  father  Danaus  (the  first 
actor),  who  holds  a  brief  dialog  with  them, 
serving  to  put  the  audience  in  possession  of  all 
the  information  needed  to  appreciate  the  sad 
plight  of  the  maidens.  The  King  of  Argos  (the 
second  actor)  then  entering,  the  chorus  entreats 
him  for  protection  against  their  pursuers;  and 
finally  he  promises  to  grant  it.  Left  alone,  the 
maidens  sing  a  hymn  to  Zeus,  at  the  end  of  which 
Danaus  returns  to  report  that  the  people  of  Argos 
have  ratified  the  King's  promise  of  protection, 
and  this  leads  the  chorus  to  sing  an  ode  of 
thanksgiving.  Then  Danaus  (who  has,  perhaps, 
mounted  on  top  of  the  dressing-house)  suddenly 
descries  the  ship  of  the  suitors  approaching  in 
pursuit.  He  withdraws  to  give  the  alarm,  and 
50 


GREEK   TRAGEDY 

the  maidens  sing  an  ode  of  lamentation.  Now 
enters  the  Herald  of  the  suitors  (the  first  actor, 
who  had  previously  impersonated  Danaus),  and 
he  sternly  bids  the  young  women  follow  him  to 
the  ship,  giving  no  heed  to  their  terrified  appeals 
for  mercy.  The  King  of  Argos  returns,  and  a 
bitter  battle  of  words  follows  between  him  and 
the  Herald,  after  which  both  of  them  withdraw, 
whereupon  the  chorus  expresses,  in  a  song,  its 
joy  that  the  monarch  has  refused  to  surrender 
them.  At  last  Danaus  comes  back  (the  first  actor 
once  more)  to  conduct  his  daughters  into  the  city 
itself  for  greater  security.  The  maidens  follow 
their  father  out  of  the  orchestra,  and  the  play  is 
over. 

If  the  dispute  between  the  King  of  Argos  and 
the  Herald  had  been  narrated  by  a  witness,  and 
not  actually  presented,  then  only  one  actor  would 
be  required  for  the  performance  of  the  *  Suppli- 
ants,' one  actor  personating  in  turn  each  of  the 
characters.  But  without  this  dispute  the  play 
would  be  less  dramatic  than  it  is ;  and  even  now 
its  lyric  abundance  is  what  we  notice  first,  the 
adroit  alternation  of  hymn  and  song  and  ode. 
Yet  there  is  a  struggle  sustaining  these  interludes 
and  justifying  their  existence;  there  is  that  con- 
flict of  will  which  is  the  very  essence  of  the 
drama.  The  daughters  of  Danaus  are  determined 
not  to  marry  their  cousins— who  are  resolved 
5> 


GREEK   TRAGEDY 

that  they  shall ;  and  here  the  issue  is  joined,  and 
we  have  the  possibility  of  dramatic  interest. 
There  is  even  suspense,  since  the  spectators  are 
in  doubt,  first,  whether  the  King  of  Argos  will 
promise  the  protection  sought,  and  second,  whe- 
ther he  will  afterward  yield  to  the  arrogant  de- 
mands of  the  pursuers. 

In  the  later  plays  of  Aeschylus,  devised  for  per- 
formance under  similar  conditions  of  theatrical 
simplicity ,Aan  open  orchestra  with  no  stage  and 
no  scenery^with  two  actors  only,  with  a  full 
chorus  of  fifteen  men,— in  these  we  see  the  same 
imperfect  differentiation  of  what  is  dramatic  from 
what  is  lyric^  In  one  of  them,  the  'Persians,' 
we  cannot  really  discover,  in  the  episodes  of  the 
play  as  we  have  it,  any  element  of  a  conflict  of 
will.  In  another,  *  Prometheus  Bound,'  we  can 
see  at  the  core  of  it  the  strife  between  Zeus  (who 
wishes  to  wrest  a  fatal  secret  from  the  mortal) 
and  Prometheus  (who  will  stubbornly  endure  all 
the  tortures  he  knows  ta  be  in  store  for  him 
sooner  than  disclose  what  he  has  resolved  to  keep 
hid).  In  a  third  tragedy,  'Agamemnon,'  also  to 
be  performed  by^two  actors  only,  one  of  them . 
impersonating  Clytemnestra,  and  the  other  ap-. 
pearing  in  turn  as  the  Watchman,  as  the  Herald, 
as  Agamemnon,  as  Cassandra,  and  as  Aegisthus 
—in  this  tragedy  the  struggle  is  more  dramatically 
presented,  with  a  more  skilful  use  of  suspense. 
52 


GREEK   TRAGEDY 

Indeed,  so  artfully  has  Aeschylus  ordered  the 
sequence  of  his  plot  that  almost  from  the  begin- 
ning the  spectator  is  oppressed  by  an  awful  sense 
of  impending  doom.  /With  all  its  meagerness  of 
incident,  the  play  is  never  lacking  in  theatrical 
effectiveness ;  it  is  not  only  truly  tragic,  it  is  also 
really  dramatic. 

After  Thespis,  about  whom  we  know  almost 
nothing,  other  play-makers  had  come— Pratinas 
and  Phrynichus,  about  whom  we  know  some- 
thing. As  they  had  prepared  the  path  for 
Aeschylus,  so  Aeschylus  made  the  way  ready 
for  Sophocles,  in  whom  the  Greek  theater  had 
its  most  accomplished  artist.  Aristotle  tells  us 
that  it  wa^ophocles  who  first  made  use  of  a 
third  actpf,  thus  setting  an  example  followed  by 
all  who  came  after  him,  and  who  did  not  dare 
ask  for  more  actors  than  Sophocles  had  been 
satisfied  with.  In  Aeschylus  we  see  the  drama 
emerging  out  of  the  lyric  and  seeking  hesitatingly 
to  differentiate  itself.  In  Sophocles  we  see  the 
drama  solidly  established,  and  yet  supported  and 
relieved  by  lyric  interludes  which  are  made  in- 
tegral parts  of  a  harmonious  structure.  He  was 
no  violent  reformer,  and,  indeed,  it  may  be  that 
he  was  almost  unconscious  of  the  importance  of 
his  improvements.  Certain  of  his  tragedies  are 
53 


GREEK  TRAGEDY 

as  undramatic  as  certain  of  the  tragedies  of 
Aesciiylus.  But  in  'Oedipus  the  King,'  on  the 
other  hand,  he  showed  how  a  Greek  tragedy  can 
retain  much  of  its  primitive  simplicity  of  outline 
and  yet  express  a  gradually  increasing  intensity 
of  emotion,  until  at  last  the  action  rises  to  its  in- 
evitable and  appalling  catastrophe. 

With  a  third  actor  in  addition  to  the  two  used 
by  Aeschylus,  Sophocles  could  present  two  char- 
acters arguing  face  to  face,  with  a  third  inter- 
vening to  change  the  current  of  the  discussion. 
He  could  reduce  to  a  minimum  all  mere  narration 
by  messengers;  and  he  could  show  before  the 
eyes  of  the  spectators  the  scenes  a  faire,  the  sali- 
ent episodes  of  the  vital  struggle  which  was  the 
heart  of  his  theme,  as  when  Antigone  stands  up 
against  Creon,  asserting  that  she  did  only  her 
duty  when  she  bestowed  funeral  rites  upon  her 
dead  brother,  whatever  thp  consequences  to  her- 
self for  thus  violating  the  King's  decrees  Sopho- 
cles made  use  of  the  chorus  not  only  as  a  device 
to  gain  time  while  the  actors  were  changing 
from  one  character  to  another,  and  not  merely 
to  relieve  the  stress  of  the  action  by  quieter  pas- 
sages of  pure  lyric  when  no  actors  were  present;. 
but  in  his  hands  the  members  of  the  chorus  were 
made  subordinate  personag«&4i£^^  play,  closer 
to  the  chief  characters  than  the  spectator  was,  and 
therefore  serving  as  intermediaries  for  the  com- 
54 


GREEK   TRAGEDY 

municating  of  emotion,  and  suggesting  to  the 
spectator  by  their  words  and  deeds  how  he  ought 
to  feel  in  the  presence  of  so  tragic  a  situation  as 
that  then  being  presented. 

Sophocles  was  thirty  years  younger  than  Aes- 
chylus, and  it  is  probable  that  the  accessories  of 
a  performance  had  been  elaborated  since  the  space 
for  the  orchestra  had  first  been  leveled  at  the  foot 
of  the  curving  hillside.  The  Athenians  must  soon 
have  seen  that  they  had  hit  u^on  the  best  possible 
place  for  the  stately  procession  and  the  grave 
dances  of  the  chorus ;  and  they  w6uld  therefore 
be  likely  to  establish  themselves  there  perma- 
nently, building  the  seats  for  the  spectators  more 
solidly,  for  example,  and  putting  up  a  permanent 
house  for  the  actors  to  dress  in.  This  house 
had  been  a  mere  tent  of  skins  when  the  chorus 
sang  in  the  market-place,  and  even  when  the 
orchestra  was  first  m^de  ready  in  a  hollow  of  the 
hills,  the  dressing-room  may  have  been  no  more 
than  a  hut  of  boards.  But  by  the  time  Sophocles 
was  at  the  height  of  his  career  this  shed  had 
probably  been  enlarged,  or  at  least  elongated, 
until  it  formed  a  background  to  the  full  circle  of 
the  orchestra.  Intended  for  a  purely  practical 
purpose  as  it  was,  its  situation  would  be  likely 
soon  to  suggest  some  decorative  treatment, 
probably  rather  architectural  than  pictorial. 

Aristotle  tells  us  that  Sophocles  raised  the 
55 


GREEK  TRAGEDY 

number  of  actors  to  three  and  added  scene^aint- 
ing;  but  no  two  authorities  are  in  agreement  as 
to  what  we  are  to  understand  by  the  last  word 
thus  translated.  Scene-painting  as  we  know  it 
nowadays,  this  is  something  which  it  is  quite 
impossible  for  Sophocles  to  have  anticipated. 
Aristotle's  phrase  may  mean  no  more  than  that 
the  dressing-house  owed  to  the  suggestion  of 
Sophocles  a  more  seemly  appearance,  and  perhaps 
even  some  symbolic  decoration,  in  accord  with 
the  time  and  place  of  the  successive  tragedies 
which  were  to  be  performed  before  it.  Very 
likely  the  various  plays  of  Sophocles  were  origi- 
nally acted  in  an  orchestra  (which  was  a  circular 
space  about  seventy  feet  in  diameter),  and  before 
a  dressing-house  about  as  long  as  the  orchestra 
was  wide,  and  provided  with  three  doors  opening 
on  the  same  level.  Altho  Attic  audiences  were 
like  Elizabethan  audiences  in  that  their  prime  in- 
terest was  in  what  was  to  be  acted  before  them, 
and  in  that  they  never  gave  a  needless  thought  to 
the  special  spot  where  the  action  was  supposed 
to  take  place,  still  the  presence  of  a  low-lying 
edifice  beyond  the  orchestra  might  be  useful,  not 
only  by  confining  the  roving  eye  of  the  spectator, 
but  as  suggesting  to  him  the  palace  or  the  temple 
in  front  of  which  the  story  was  to  be  acted. 

*  Oedipus  the  King,'  which  is  the  masterpiece 
of  Sophocles,  and  indeed  of  all  Attic  tragedy, 
56 


GREEK  TRAGEDY 

begins  with  the  slow  and  solemn  entrance  of  the 
chorus  of  Theban  elders  into  the  orchestra.  Then 
the  center  doors  of  the  dressing-house  open  and 
Oedipus  comes  forth  (the  first  actor).  He  seems 
taller  than  an  ordinary  man,  because  he  has  on  the 
buskin  (or  tragic  boot),  and  because  he  is  wearing 
theIof!y'tragic  mask,  which  rises  high  above  his 
own  head.  He  asks  what  it  is  they  want  of 
him,  and  he  is  answered  by  a  Priest  of  Zeus  (the 
second  actor),  who  beseeches  the  King  to  find 
some  remedy  for  the  plague  that  besets  the 
people.  Oedipus  replies  that  he  has  already  sent 
his  brother-in-law,  Creon,  to  consult  the  oracle. 
Then  enters  Creon  (the  third  actor)  with  good 
news:  the  blight  will  cease  when  vengeance  is 
done  on  the  murderer  of  Laius  (who  was  the 
predecessor  of  Oedipus,  and  whose  widow, 
locasta,  Oedipus  has  taken  to  wife).  Creon  and 
the  Priest  of  Zeus  withdraw,  but  Oedipus  re- 
mains while  the  chorus  intones  a  prayer;  and 
then  he  promises  a  reward  for  the  name  of  the 
murderer  of  Laius,  and  declares  that  he  has  sent 
for  Tiresias,  the  blind  prophet.  Tiresias  enters 
(the  third  actor  again,  but  now  wearing  a  differ- 
ent mask) ;  he  seeks  to  avoid  making  any  dis- 
closure, until  Oedipus  loses  patience  and  accuses 
him  of  being  a  partner  in  the  crime,  whereupon 
the  seer  declares  that  Oedipus  himself  is  the 
guilty  one. 

57 


GREEK  TRAGEDY 

Certain  of  his  own  innocence,  Oedipus  sus- 
pects Creon  of  having  suborned  Tiresias  to  make 
this  charge.  But  the  blind  prophet  asserts  his 
own  independence,  and  warns  Oedipus  that 
"  this  day  shall  show  thy  birth  and  shall  bring 
thy  ruin."  Tiresias  departs,  Oedipus  withdraws 
into  the  house,  and  the  chorus  sings  a  hymn' of 
foreboding.  Then  returns  Creon  (the  third  actor), 
and  Oedipus  comes  out  to  upbraid  him  with 
treachery.  They  are  now  joined  by  locasta  (the 
second  actor,  who  has,  of  course,  changed  his 
mask  also),  and  at  his  wife's  appeal  Oedipus 
modifies  his  sentence  of  death  against  her  brothef 
to  one  of  banishment.  When  Creon  has  departed, 
Jpcasta  asks  the  cause  of  the  quarrel;  and  then 
reveals  to  Oedipus  that  her  first  husband,  LaTus, 
was  warned  that  he  should  die  by  the  hand  of 
his  own  son,  and  that  the  father  therefore  caused 
the  child  to  be  thrown  from  a  cliff.  Oedipus  in- 
quires how  it  was  that  Laius  died,  and  then  he 
begins  to  perceive  it  to  be  dimly  possible  that  he 
himself  may  be  the  slayer  of  his  wife's  first  hus- 
band. Oedipus  tells  locasta  that  he  was  brought 
up  by  the  King  of  Corinth,  but  was  once  taunted 
with  the  fact  that  he  was  not  a  true  son,  where- 
upon he  had  gone  to  the  oracle,  which  had 
warned  him  that  he  should  marry  his  own 
mother,  in  fear  of  which  sin  he  had  abandoned 
Corinth^     The  King  and  Queen  withdraw  tOr 

58 


<7 


GREEK  TRAGEDY 

gather  in   doubt  -and  sorrow,   and  the  chorus 
chants  a  song  of  destiny. 

locasta  comes  forth  on  her  way  to  prayer, 
when  there  arrives  a  Messenger  from  Corinth 
(the  third  actor  once  more),  who  announces  the 
death  of  the  King  of  Corinth.  locasta  has  Oedi- 
pus summoned,  and  together  they  question  the 
Messenger,  who,  to  relieve  their  minds,  discloses 
that  Oedipus  was  only  the  adopted  son  of  the 
dead  monarch,  and  that  he  himself  had  received 
Oedipus  as  a  babe  from  a  servant  of  Laius.  lo- 
casta, after  vainly  imploring  her  husband  to  seek 
no  further,  herself  perceives  the  fatal  truth— that 
she  is  married  to  her  own  son  after  he  had  killed 
his  father.  With  a  sudden  cry  of  despair  she 
rushes  within  and  is  seen  no  more.  Oedipus, 
still  groping,  confronts  the  Messenger  from  Cor- 
inth with  an  old  Herdsman  of  LaTus  (the  second 
actor  again),  and  forces  the  aged  servitor  to  admit 
that  instead  of  destroying  the  child  of  locasta  and 
Laius,  as  he  was  bidden,  he  had  spared  the  boy 
and  given  it  to  the  man  who  is  now  present  as 
the  Messenger  from  Corinth.  At  last  Oedipus 
sees  that  the  oracles  are  fulfilled,  and  that  he  is 
truly  accursed.  Overwhelmed  with  woe,  he  tot- 
ters into  the  house,  whereupon  the  chorus  sings 
an  ode  on  the  uncertainty  of  life. 

Then  comes  one  from  within  (the  second  actor), 
to  relate  the  suicide  of  locasta,  who  has  hanged 
59 


/ 


^  GREEK   TRAGEDY 

herself,  and  to  announce  also  the  punishment 
which  Oedipus  has  inflicted  on  himself  for  his 
unwitting  sins:  he  has  thrust  out  both  his  eyes. 
Oedipus  soon  enters,  probably  wearing  a  different 
mask,  and  he  bewails  his  miserable  fate,  while 
the  chorus  sympathizes.  Next  Creon  returns  to 
assume  the  throne,  but  not  to  reproach  his  stricken 
brother-in-law.  Oedipus  is  about  to  go  forth  a 
wanderer  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  and  Creon 
allows  him  to  bid  farewell  to  his  two  little  daugh- 
ters, confided  thereafter  to  the  care  of  their  uncle. 
And  when  Oedipus  and  his  children  have  with- 
drawn with  Creon,  the  chorus  gravely  sums  up 
the  moral  and  warns  the  spectators  that  they  are 
to  "call  no  man  happy  until  he  is  dead."  Then 
they  themselves  circle  slowly  out  of  the  orchestra 
to  the  sad  and  piercing  music  of  the  flute,  and 
disappear  at  length  behind  the  dressing-house; 
and  the  play  is  done  at  last. 

When  Aristotle  declared  that  tragedy  is  a  higher 
art  than  the  epic,  it  was  of  this  masterpiece  of 
Sophocles  that  he  was  thinking.  Altho  there  are 
here,  in  a  single  plot,  parricide  and  incest  and 
suicide,  horrible  crimes  linked  in  an  inexorable 
chain,  so  austere  is  the  treatment  and  so  lofty 
the  purpose  that  the  play  is  void  of  offense.  It 
is  full  of  terror,  and  it  is  charged  with  pity,  for 
not  from  fate  alone  does  Oedipus  suffer.  His 
punishment  is  also  for  his  own  pride  and  wilful- 
60 


GREEK   TRAGEDY 

ness;  and  his  downfall  is  brought  about  because 
he  insisted  on  discovering  what  it  was  best  for 
him  never  to  know.  To  exert  one's  own  will  is 
the  final  proof  of  man's  existence;  and  therefore 
what  the  drama  necessarily  deals  with  is  the  most 
significant  action  of  human  life.  This  essential 
struggle  Sophocles  brings  out  more*sharply  than 
Aeschylus  before  him  or  than  Euripides  after  him. 

That  a  tragedy  such  as  'Oedipus  the  Kfng' 
could  delight  and  move  the  thousands  of  specta- 
tors who  sat  in  the  seats  that  girt  the  orchestra, 
or  who  stood  higher  up  on  the  hillside— this  is 
testimony  to  the  artistic  sensibility  of  the  Athenian 
audience  and  to  its  trained  intelligence.  [The  dra- 
matist must  always  conform  to  the  taste  of  those 
to  whom  he  is  appealing.  He  may  seek  to  im- 
prove that  taste,  to  elevate  it  and  purify  it,  but 
he  cannot  ignore  it.  If  he  fails  to  consider  it,  his 
play  will  fail  also.  He  is  fortunate  if  his  audience 
is  made  up  of  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men,  not 
the  educated  orily,  or  the  ignorant  either,  but 
broadly  chosen  ;Cfor  the  more  various  the  spectaT 
tors,  the  more  bravely  can  the  dramatist  deal  with 
the  universal  element  of  life. 

Professor  Jebb  has  reminded  us  that  "the  col- 
lective impression  of  intelligent  listeners  ...  has 
a  critical  value  of  a  kind  which  can  seldom  be 
claimed  for  the  judgment  of  any  single  critic"; 
and  he  adds  that "  in  the  case  of  a  people  with  the 
6i 


GREEK  TRAGEDY 

unique  gifts  of  the  Greek  race,— their  obedience 
to  reason,  and  their  instinct  for  beauty,— the 
critical  value  of  the  collective  impression  was  ex- 
ceptionally high."  The  Greek  dramatist  felt  this 
solidarity  with  the  whole  body  of  spectators 
whom  he  was  to  delight  and  to  thrill;  he  was 
certain  of  a*  sympathetic  understanding  of  his 
boldest  effort;  and  by  this  certainty  he  could  not 
fail  to  be  stimulated. 

The  beauty  which  Sophocles  sought  to  set  be- 
fore the  Athenian  audience  was  not  only  a  union 
of  the  lyric  and  the  dramatic,  sustained  by  music: 
it  was  pictorial  also  and  plastic.  The  taste  of  the 
spectators  was  as  keenly  critical  of  the  sculp- 
turesque attitudes  of  the  actors  or  of  the  chorus 
as  it  was  trained  to  appreciate  the  delivery  of  a 
phrase,  the  rhythm  of  a  line,  the  propriety  of  a 
speech,  or  the  structure  of  the  plot.  The  dra- 
matist was  responsible  for  the  whole  perform- 
ance, for  the  complete  art-work.  It  was  his  duty 
and  his  delight  himself  to  drill  the  chorus  in  their 
maneuvers,  and  to  see  that  the  gestures  were  ever 
graceful  and  the  groupings  always  harmonious. 

Among  us  who  speak  English  the  opera  is  the 
privilege  of  the  rich,  with  all  the  narrowing  and 
limitation  that  therefore  ensues ;  but  if  it  was  not 
thus  restricted  in  its  scope,  one  might  dwell  at 
length  on  a  certain  likeness  between  the  tragedies 
of  Sophocles  and  the  music-dramas  of  Wagner, 
62 


GREEK   TRAGEDY    W 

from  which,  indeed,  they  are  1^  remote  in  form 
and  in  spirit  than  they  are  ^Pm  the  plays  of 
Shakspere  as  these  are  now  performed.  Wagner 
was  following  Sophocles  in  seeking  a  simplicity 
of  theme  as  massive  as  it  is  splendid,  and  also  in 
wishing  to  add  to  the  lyric  and  the  dramatic  all 
the  further  beauty  to  be  derived  from  a  skilful 
use  of  the  plastic  art.  Wagner  could  avail  him- 
self of  scenery  and  of  artificial  lighting  and  of 
various  mechanical  devices  impossible  to  Sopho- 
cles; but  undoubtedly  the  Greek  dramatist,  like 
the  German  composer,  relied  upon  the  contem- 
plation of  characteristic  attitudes  and  upon  the 
appropriate  positions  of  the  actors  and  of  the 
chorus.  The  ancient  dramatist  had  even  one 
advantage  over  the  modern  in  that  his  plays  were 
performed  out  of  doors  in  the  springtime,  when 
at  any  moment  a  breeze  might  sweep  up  from 
the  sea  to  flutter  the  flowing  draperies  of  the 
characters  and  of  the  chorus,  and  to  blow  their 
loose  garments  about  their  bodies  in  lines  of 
unexpected  beauty. 


On  the  serene  heights  of  dramatic  poesy,  where 
Sophocles  breathed  freely  as  tho  there  only  could 
he  find  his  native  air,  the  third  of  the  great  Greek 
dramatists  was  ill  at  ease;  and  in  the  plays  of 
Eurigyes  we  can  perceive  at  least  the  beginning 
6} 


^  GREEK   TRAGEDY 

of  a  decline.  fV^  structure  of  his  plots  is  less 
careful;  the  situBBns  are  more  violent;  the  char- 
acters are  less  worthy  of  pity ;  the  moral  tone  of 
the  whole  work  is  less  elevated  and  far  less  in- 
spiriting.; If  we  admit  that  Aeschylus  dealt  with 
demigods,  and  that  Sophocles  honored  heroes, 
while  Euripides  is  interested  rather  in  men  as  they 
are,  we  must  acknowledge  also  that  man  as 
Euripides  represents  him  is  often  a  pitiful  crea- 
ture, involved  in  sensational  adventures  far  less 
significant  than  those  to  be  found  in  the  earlier 
tragedies.  Indeed,  it  is  woman  rather  than  man 
whom  Euripides  likes  to  take  as  the  chief  figure 
of  his  pathetic  story— a  woman  often  of  unbridled 
passions  and  swift  to  act  on  the  primary  impulses 
of  her  sex. 

Despite  all  the  evidence  of  the  extreme  clever- 
ness of  Eu^ides,  we  can  see  that  he  was  not  a 
born  play-maker  U^Sophocles;  he  had  not  the 
same  instinctive  certainty  of  touch ;  and  he  seems 
also  to  have  neglected  the  art  of  composition. 
Even  when  by  chance  he  has  made  choice  of  a 
story  in  which  there  is  a  set  struggle,  such  as 
would  give  substance  to  a  plot*  he  sometimes 
fails  to  present  the  semes  a  fairei^^Xhe.  scenes  which 
must  be  shown  in  action  if  the  spectator  is  to  find 
full  satisfaction./  His  plays  are  frequently  melo- 
dramatic in  their  framework,  while  the  poet  is 
ironic  in  his  treatment  of  his  theme,  a  combina- 
64 


GREEK  TRAGEDY 

tion  which  could  not  but  be  disconcerting  to  the 
Athenian  public.  CHis  tragedies%re  lacking  in  the 
noblej^im^rity  to  be  found  in  the  tragedies  of 
Sophocles,  and  they  are  also  not  so  homogeneous, 
being  sometimes  without  the  unity  of  design  and 
even  without  the  unity  of  tone  to  which  the 
Greeks  had  been  accustomed.  The  Attic  distaste 
for  the  abnormal  and  for  the  freakish  will  help  to 
explain  the  failure  of  Euripides  to  please  his  im- 
mediate contemporaries;  and  it  is  evidence  of  a 
later  decline  of  the  Greek  delicacy  of  perception 
that  a  wide  popularity  did  come  to  Euripides 
shortly  after  his  death. 

To-day  our  taste  is  not  Attic,  and  even  by  tak- 
ing thought  we  cannot  put  ourselves  in  the  place 
of  the  Athenian,  to  see  his  poets  as  he  saw  them, 
and  to  weigh  them  in  the  equal  scales.  And  this 
is  why  many  lovers  of  literature  find  Euripides 
the  most  modern  of  the  great  Greeks,  the  least 
remote  in  his  attitude  toward  our  common  hu- 
manity, the  closest  to  us  in  emotion  and  in  char- 
acter-drawing. His  plays  may  be  less  tragic  than 
those  of  his  greater  predecessors,  less  severe, 
even  less  artistic.  But  we  are  not  so  particular  as 
the  Athenians  were;  our  standards  of  taste  are 
not  so  lofty;  and  we  relish  a  broader  pathos 
than  appealed  to  the  Greeks.'  Even  if  certain  of 
the  plays  of  Euripides  are  not  tragedies  truly, 
but  tragi-comedies  or  melodramas  or  domestic 
65 


GREEK   TRAGEDY 

dramas,  they  are  only  the  more  modern  for  that. 
Nowadays  we  are  glad  to  greet  a  heroine  who 
has  sinned  and  suffered,  and  whose  sad  situation 
is  so  presented  as  to  wring  our  hearts  with  sym- 
pathy and  to  keep  us  dissolved  in  tears.  Medea, 
for  example,  is  perhaps  the  earliest "  woman  with 
a  past " ;  she  is  the  ancestress  of  the  *  Dame  aux 
Camelias '  and  of  *  Magda  ' ;  and  the  tragedy  of 
Euripides  is  like  the  dramas  of  Dumas  and  Suder- 
mann  in  that  it  is  little  more  than  a  star-part,  a 
piece  intended  for  the  exploitation  of  a  single 
actor,— as  a  brief  summary  will  make  plain. 

The  Nurse  of  Medea's  children  (the  second 
actor)  enters  the  orchestra  from  the  house,  and 
opens  the  play  with  a  long  speech,  telling  the 
spectators  how  hard  it  is  for  Medea  to  bear  the 
new  marriage  which  her  husband  lason  is  about 
to  make.  The  Teacher  of  Medea's  children  (thd 
third  actor)  leads  on  the  two  boys,  and  informs 
the  Nurse  that  Medea  and  her  children  are  to  be 
sent  away.  Before  the  Teacher  takes  the  boys 
into  the  house  Medea  is  heard  bemoaning  her 
fate.  A  chorus  of  Corinthian  women  now  enters 
the  orchestra  and  asks  the  Nurse  why  Medea  is 
crying  aloud.  At  the  summons  of  the  Nurse, 
Medea  (the  first  actor)  comes  forth  and  exposes 
the  reasons  for  her  grief.  Then  enters  Creon  (the 
third  actor  again).  King  of  Corinth,  and  father  of 
the  maiden  lason  is  about  to  wed.  He  informs 
66 


> 


GREEK  TRAGEDY 

Medea  that  she  is  banished  with  her  children. 
She  begs  a  day's  delay  before  her  departure; 
and  Creon  at  last  grants  this  just  before  he  goes. 
The  chorus  chants  the  degeneracy  of  the  times. 

Jason  (the  second  actor)  enters,  soon  revealing 
himself  to  be  a  contemptible  creature.  He  is 
scolded  and  threatened  by  Medea.  Even  the 
chorus  comments  adversely  on  his  feeble  self-de- 
fense; and  when  he  withdraws  the  chorus  sings 
a  hymn  to  love.  Aegeus  (the  third  actor)  arrives ; 
he  is  an  Athenian,  and  with  him  Medea  agrees 
to  fly  on  his  promise  of  shelter  and  protection. 
When  he  is  gone  Medea  declares  her  intention  of 
killing  the  bride  of  lason,  and  the  chorus  mildly 
dissuades  her.  She  retires  to  get  a  poisoned  robe ; 
and  the  chorus  sings  a  stirring  ode  to  the  glory 
of  Athens.  Medea  comes  back,  and  so  does  lason 
(the  second  actor  as  before),  whom  she  has  sent 
for.  She  calls  her  children  to  bear  the  robe  to 
Creon's  daughter,  that  she  may  entreat  Creon  to 
allow  the  boys  to  remain.  After  the  chorus  has 
sung  another  song  of  condolence  with  Medea,  the 
Teacher  brings  back  the  two  boys,  and  the 
mother  weeps  over  them,  and  bids  them  fare- 
well. 

Suddenly  a  Messenger  (the  third  actor)  rushes 
in  to  bid  Medea  fly,  since  the  poison  has  de- 
stroyed both  Creon  and  his  daughter.  Medea 
rejoices,  and,  for  further  revenge  on  her  false 
67 


\ 


GREEK    TRAGEDY 

husband,  she  is  now  resolved  to  slay  her  two 
boys  also.  She  goes  within  the  house,  and  we 
hear  the  outcry  of  the  children,  while  the  chorus 
expresses  its  disapproval  of  her  deadly  act.  lason 
comes  back,  and  the  chorus  informs  him  of  what 
evil  deed  Medea  has  just  been  guilty.  He  orders 
the  doors  to  be  broken  in,  whereupon  Medea  ap- 
pears on  the  roof  of  the  dressing-house,  and  is 
borne  away  through  the  air  in  a  chariot  drawn  by 
dragons— probably  represented  by  a  basket  of 
some  sort  swung  high  in  the  air  by  a  rope  from  a 
crane  at  the  end  of  the  dressing-house.  After 
Medea  has  disappeared  lason  exhales  his  woe  and 
departs,  followed  by  the  chorus,  declaring  that  the 
gods  do  things  for  reasons  inscrutable  to  mortals. 
As  we  contemplate  the  evolution  of  Greek 
tragedy,  we  see  that  the  austere  Aeschylus,  in- 
heriting a  form  semi-lyric  and  only  semi-dramatic, 
felt  his  chorus  to  be  at  least  as  important  as  were 
his  actors;  we  see  that  the  sincere  Sophocles, 
developing  the  dramatic  element,  was  yet  able  to 
make  the  chorus  helpful,  in  that  it  served  to  sug- 
gest to  the  spectators  the  feelings  he  wished  them 
to  have;  and  we  see  that  the  skeptic  Euripides 
found  the  chorus  a  useless  survival  which  he  did 
not  dare  discard  out  of  respect  for  tradition,  and 
of  which  he  availed  himself  mainly  for  the  dis- 
play of  his  own  lyric  gift.  He  might  be  a  care- 
less playwright,  a  brutal  realist,  a  frank  sensa- 
68 


GREEK  TRAGEDY 

tionalist ;  he  was  an  exquisite  lyrist.  As  Coleridge 
said,  his  choruses  "  may  be  faulty  as  choruses, 
but  how  beautiful  and  affecting  they  are  as  odes 
and  songs!" 

VI 

(The  presence  of  the  chorus  in  the  orchestra 
throughout  the  play  accounts  for  the  fact  that  the 
Greek  dramatists  scarcely  ever  attempted  any  y 
change  of  scene  in  the  course  of  a  tragedyj /For; 
one  thing,  there  was  no  scenery  to  change;  and 
for  another,  there  was  no  easy  way  of  making 
plausible  a  substitution  of  one  imagined  place  for 
another  while  the  chorus  remained  stationary  be- 
fore the  eyes  of 'the  spectators;  so  here  we  have 
a  valid  reason  for  what  is  called  the  Unity  of 
Place^  And  the  absence  of  any  intermission  dur- 
ing the  performance  of  a  tragedy— due  also,  in 
part  at  least,  to  the  presence  of  the  chorus— led 
to  a  straightforward  movement  of  the  plot,  one 
episode  following  close  on  another,  the  inter- 
vening choral  odes  allowing  for  whatever  lapse  of 
time  might  be  required  by  the  plot.  These  exten- 
sions of  the  duration  of  the  action  being  taken  for 
granted,  and  not  actually  specified,  many  critics 
have  seen  in  Greek  tragedy  what  is  called  the 
Unity  of  Time. 

The  circumstances  of  the  actual  performance 
will  also  account  for  most  of  the  other  peculiari- 
69 


GREEK   TRAGEDY 

ties  of  the  Greek  plays;  and  if,  for  instance,  we 
find  in  them  few  scenes  of  violence,  of  physical 
excitement,  of  battle,  murder,  and  sudden  death, 
grobably  one  reason  is  that  combats  and  rapid 
/motion  of  any  kind  were  difficult  to  actors  raised 

^  on  the  buskin  ^nd  partly  blinded  by  the  towering 
tragic  mask./ /J  To  fall  to  the  ground  in  these 
accoutrements  would  be  to  risk  the  ungraceful 
and  to  break  up  the  stately  harmony  and  sculp- 
tural beauty  of  gesture  and  of  grouping,  like  that 
of  a  bas-relief,  which  was  called  for  by  the  min- 
gling of  the  actors  and  of  the  chorus  in  front  of 
the  low-lying  dressing-house  as  a  background. 

The  same  circurnstances  of  the  actual  perform- 
ance which  mad^e  the  Greek  dramatist  seem  to  be 
bound  by  the  so-called  Unities  of  Time  and  Place 
forced  him  to  deal  only  with  the  culminating 

^  moments  of  his  plot,  so  compacted  in  the  presen- 
tation that  more  than  one  ancient  tragedy  appears 
to  be  little  longer  than  the  fifth  and  final  act  of  a 
modern  ^lay .  As  alljhat  went  before  had  to  be 
explained  briefly  in  the  earlier  scenes,  the  Greek 
was  debarred  from  exhibiting  the  development  or 
the  disintegration  of  a  character  such  as  can  occur 
only  after  a  lapse  of  time.  All  his  characters  are 
and  must  be  unchanging.  Prometheus  and 
Medea  are  the  same  at  the  end  of  the  play  as  they 
were  at  the  beginning,  and  they  retain  always  the 
same  fixed  mask.  Even  Oedipus,  who  alters 
70 


GREEK   TRAGEDY 

his  mask,  and  is  broken  and  bowed  with  shame 
and  grief  in  the  sight  of  the  spectators,  has  had 
no  time  yet  to  realize  the  full  force  of  his  dread 
discovery.  ^Yet  the  disadvantage  of  this  was 
lessened  bwthe  fact  that  every  Greek  dramatist 
presented  an  the  same  day  four  plays,  the  last 
being  satiric,  and  the  first  three  being  sometimes 
so  linked  together  as  to  show  successive  incidents 
of  the  same  legend/  The  four  plays  followed 
one  after  the  othei^  filling  the  long  spring  day 
with  pleasure;  and  in  the  intervals,  no  doubt,  the 
vast  multitude  on  the  hillside  around  the  sunken 
ring  of  the  orchestra  rose  to  their  feet  and 
stretched  their  limbs  and  refreshed  themselves 
\Vith  meat  and  drink,— in  much  the  same  fashion 
as  the  latter-day  pilgrims  to  Bayreuth  are  now 
wont  to  do. 

It  is  in  the  chorus  that  we  must  see  not  only 
the  germ,  but  the  dominating  influence  of  Greek 
tragedy,  /^he  chorus  survived  to  the  end  as  the 
ever-preslj^t  evidence  that  tragedy  had  been  de- 
veloped out  of  the  dithyramb^  The  early  specta- 
tors who  gathered  in  the  market-place  to  listen  to 
the  Dionysiac  lyrics  were  delighted  with  even  a 
mere  hint  of  the  drama;  and  in  the  beginning  no 
one  had  yet  acquired  the^gjdll  needed  to  hold  the 
interest  of  an  audience  by  the  artful  cumulation 
of  dramatic  episodes.  In  the  beginning  the 
*  Suppliants,'  which  has  little  more  action  than  an 
7' 


GREEK   TRAGEDY 

oratorio,  and  the  '  Persians,'  which  appears  quite 
undramatic  to  us,  because  we  are  looking  back, 
may  have  seemed  dramatic  to  the  Greeks,  because 
they  were  looking  forward— because  these  plays, 
chiefly  lyric  as  they  are,  are  also  nearer  to  the  true 
drama  than  anything  that  had  gone  before.  The 
undramatically  distended  lamentations  of '  Philoc- 
tetes,'  even,  were  probably  more  interesting  than  a 
choral  ode  would  have  been,  if  only  because  they 
came  as  a  relief  between  two  choral  odes.  Aris- 
totle traces  the  slow  improvement  with  his  cus- 
tomary clearness :  "  It  was  not  till  late  that  the 
short  plot  was  discarded  for  one  of  greater  com- 
pass. .  .  .  The  number  of  episodes  was  also 
increased,  and  other  embellishments  added." 

The  simplicity  and  the  dignity  which  we  ad- 
mire in  Greek  tragedy  are  due  partly  to  the  cir- 
cumstances of  its  origin.  They  are  due  partly, 
also,  to  the  Greek's  gifts,  to  his  inventiveness,  to 
his  ingenuity,  to  his  sense  of  form,  to  his  desire 
for  order  and  harmony  and  symmetry.  Crude 
in  certain  ways  the  Greek  drama  is,  as  we  cannot 
help  admitting;  but  still  it  is  the  most  wonderful 
in  all  the  long  history  of  the  theater,  because  it  is 
fthh  only  great  drama  which  has  been  wrought 
out  by  a  single  people,  wholly  without  any  aid 
from  the  outside,  with  absolutely  no  model  to 
profit  b^  The  dramatic  instinct,  the  desirjito 
personafe,    the    enjoyment   of    mimicry— these 

12 


GREEK  TRAGEDY 

things  are  inherent  in  all  of  us:  sawages  and 
children  possess  them  abundantly;  and  yet  the 
Greeks  were  alone  in  their  artistic  utilization  of 
these  natural  qualities,  and  in  so  availing  them- 
selves of  these  that  they  were  able  to  develop  a 
drama,  and  to  raise  this  drama  to  the  loftiest 
reaches  of  poetry,  entirely  on  their  own  initiative. 
This  they  did,  and  this  no  modern  race  has  been 
able  to  do,  because  the  dramatic  literature  of 
every  modern  language  has  come,  at  one  time  or 
another,  directly  or  indirectly,  under  the  influence 
of  Greek  tray^edy. 


73 


III.  GREEK  AND  ROMAN  COMEDY 


THE  law  of  the  theater,  as  M.  Brunetiere  has 
formulated  it,  is  that  the  drama  must  deal 
with  an  exercise  of  the  human  will,  and  that 
therefore  a  struggle  of  some  sort  is  an  essential 
element  in  the  pleasure  we  take  in  a  play.  A  clear 
understanding  of  this  law  is  helpful  in  any  ques- 
tion of  classification— for  example,  in  the  difficult 
attempt  sharply  to  set  off  tragedy  from  melodrama 
and  comedy  from  farce.  /If  the  obstacle  against 
which  the  will  of  the  herb  finally  breaks  itself  is 
absolutely  insurmountable,  the  Greek  idea  of  fate, 
for  example,  the  Christian  decree  of  Providence, 
or  the  modern  scientific  doctrine  of  heredity,  then 
we  have  tragedy  pure  and  simple.  If  the  obsta- 
cle is  not  absolutely  insurmountable,  being  no 
more  than  the  social  law,  something  of  man's 
own  making  and  therefore  not  finally  inexorable, 
then  we  have  the  serious  drama.  If  the  obstacle 
is  only  the  desire  of  another  human  being,  then 
the  result  of  the  contention  of  these  two  charac- 
74 


4 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN  COMEDY 

ters  is  likely  to  give  us  a  comedy.  And  if  the 
obstacle  is  merely  one  of  the  minor  conventions 
of  society,  then  we  may  have  farce.  But  as  there 
is  no  hard-and-fast  line  separating  these  several 
obstacles  which  the  several  heroes  are  struggling 
to  overcome,  so  the  different  types  of  play  may 
shade  into  one  another,  until  it  is  often  difficult 
to  declare  the  precise  classification.  Who  shall 
say  that  the  *  Comedy  of  Errors '  is  not,  in  fact, 
essentially  a  farce  ?  Or  that  the  Elizabethan  tra- 
gedy-of-blood  is  not  essentially  a  melodrama  ? 

Altho  the  true  dramatist  cannot  but  conceive 
both  the  incidents  of  his  play  and  its  personages 
at  the  same  moment,  yet  we  are  accustomed  to 
consider  tragedy  and  comedy  nobler  than  melo- 
drama and  farce,  because  in  the  former  the  cha- 
racters themselves  seem  to  create  the  situations  of 
the  plot  and  to  dominate  its  structure;  whereas 
in  the  latter  it  is  obvious  rather  that  the  situations 
have  evoked  the  characters,  and  that  these  are 
realized  only  in  so  far  as  the  conduct  of  the  story 
may  cause  them  to  reveal  the  characteristics  thus 
called  for.  Comedy,  then,  appears  to  us  as  a 
humorous  piece,  the  action  of  which  is  caused  by 
the  clash  of  character  on  character;  and  this  is  a 
definition  which  fits  the  *  Misanthrope/  the  '  Mar- 
riage of  Figaro,'  the  *  School  for  Scandal,'  and  the 
'Gendre  de  M.  Poirier.'  fin  all  these  comedies 
the  plot,  the  action,  the  story,  is  the  direct  result 
75 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN  COMEDY 

of  the  influence  of  the  several  characters  on  one 
another. 

A  consideration  of  the  history  of  dramatic  liter- 
ature will  show  that  comedy  of  this  standard  is 
very  infrequent  indeed,  since  the  humorous  piece 
is  always  tending  either  to  stiffen  into  drama,  as 
in  '  Froufrou,'  for  example,  or  to  relax  into  farce, 
as  in  the  '  Rivals.'  Satisfactory  as  the  definition 
seems  on  the  whole,  and  useful  as  it  is  in  aiding 
us  to  perceive  clearly  the  true  limitations  of  com- 
edy, we  must  not  insist  upon  applying  it  too 
severely  or  we  shall  find  that  we  have  erased 
from  the  list  of  the  writers  of  comedy  the  names 
of  two  of  the  greatest  masters  of  stage-humor, 
Shakspere  and  Aristophanes,  from  neither  of 
whom  have  we  a  single  comic  play  the  action  of 
which  is  caused  solely  by  the  clash  of  character 
on  character.  The  delightful  fantasies  of  Shak- 
spere fall  into  another  class,  which  we  may  term 
romantic-comedy,  and  in  which  we  find  the  comic 
plot  sustained  and  set  off  by  a  serious  plot  only 
artificially  adjoined  to  it.  The  imaginative  exu- 
berance of  Aristophanes  displayed  itself  not  in 
any  form  fairly  to  be  called  comedy,  but  rather  in 
what  may  be  described  as  lyrical-burlesque. 


Three  of  the  most  important  phases  of  Greek 
tragedy  are  preserved  for  us  in  the  extant  dramas 
76 


GRE'K  AND  ROMAN  COMEDY 

of  Aeschylus,  of  Sophocles,  and  of  Euripides. 
Other  tragic  writers  there  were,  whose  works  are 
now  lost  forever;  but  these  three  were  ever  held 
to  be  the  foremost,  and  we  are  fortunate  in  hav- 
ing the  finest  of  their  plays.  Three  phases  there 
were  also  in  Greek  comedy,  altho  less  clearly  dis- 
tinguished; and  here  we  have  not  been  so  lucky. 
To  represent  an  early  stage  of  its  evolution,  we 
have  half  a  score  of Jthe  lyrical-burlesques  of  Aris- 
tophanes; but  only  a  single  play  of  his  survives 
even  to  suggest  to  us  the  kind  of  comic  drama 
which  was  acceptable  in  a  second  period  when 
other  humorous  playwrights  rivaled  him.  The 
third  epoch,  illustrated  by  the  noble  name  of 
Mefiander,  can  be  but  guessed  at,  since  we  have 
noi  the  complete  manuscript  of  even  a  single  play. 
Yet  an  attempt  to  trace  in  outline  the  devel- 
opment of  the  Greek  comic  drama  is  not  an  alto- 
gether impossible  task,  despite  our  deficiency  in 
illustrative  examples. 

Comedy  seems  to  have  sprung  into  being  at 
the  vintage-festival  of  the  Greek  villagers,  when 
all  was  jovial  gaiety  and  jesting  license  in  honor 
of  Dionysus.  "  On  public  occasions, "  so  a  recent 
historian  of  the  origin  of  art  has  reminded  us, 
"  the  common  mood,  whether  of  joy  or  sorrow, 
is  often  communicated  even  to  those  who  were 
originally  possessed  by  the  opposite  feeling;  and 
so  powerful  is  infection  of  excitement  that  a  sober 
man  will  join  in  the  antics  of  his  drunken  com- 

77 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN  COMEDY 

rades— yielding  to  a  drunkennejs  by  induction." 
And  these  seasons  of  contagious  revelry  were  ex- 
actly suited  to  a  development  of  the  double  desire 
of  mankind  for  personation— one  man  seeking  to 
get  outside  of  his  own  individuality  and  to  as- 
sume a  character  not  his  own,  while  another  finds 
his  satisfaction  rather  in  the  observation  of  this 
simulation,  in  being  a  sympathetic  spectator  when 
actions  are  represented  not  proper  to  the  actor's 
own  character. 

So  it  came  to  pass  that  there  were  companies 
of  young  fellows,  often  disguised  grossly  as 
beasts  or  birds,  who  broke  out  into  riotous  phallic 
dances,  enjoyed  equally  by  those  who  looked  on 
and  by  those  who  took  part.  In  time  the  dancers 
grouped  themselves  in  rival  bands,  the  leaders  of 
which  indulged  in  a  give-and-take  of  banter  and 
repartee,  certainly  vulgar  and  personal,  and  prob- 
ably as  direct  and  artless  as  the  chop-logic  dialogs 
of  the  medieval  quack-doctor  and  his  jack-pud- 
ding, or  of  the  modern  ring-master  and  circus- 
clown.  The  happy  improvisation  of  this  carni- 
val spirit  which  happened  to  delight  the  crowd 
one  year  would  surely  be  repeated  the  next  year 
deliberately,  perhaps  only  to  evoke  an  unexpected 
retort  with  which  it  would  thereafter  be  con- 
joined in  what  might  prove  to  be  the  nucleus  of  a 
comic  scene  of  some  length.  Thus  a  species  would 
tend  to  appear,  as  the  tradition  was  handed 
78 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN  COMEDY 

down  from  season  to  season,  enriching  itself  con- 
stantly with  the  accretions  of  every  venturesome 
jester.  However  frail  this  framework  might  be,  it 
would  be  likely  to  contain  a  rough  realization  of 
the  more  obvious  types  of  rural  character;  and 
almost  from  the  beginning  there  would  be  abun- 
dant and  irreverent  parody  of  heroic  legend  and 
of  religious  myth. 

Then  in  time  this  inchoate  medley  of  ribald 
song  and  phallic  dance  and  abusive  repartee  ^ 
would  come  to  feel  the  influence  of  the  other 
dramatic  species,  the  origin  of  which  was  quite 
as  humble;  it  would  come  to  feel  the  influence  of 
tragedy  as  this  had  been  organized  at  last  with  its 
chorus  and  its  three  actors.  Indeed,  the  same 
native  instinct  which  led  the  Greeks  to  regulate 
tragedy  and  to  attach  it  to  a  festival  of  the  state 
would  suggest,  sooner  or  later,  that  comedy 
should  also  be  adopted  by  the  city.  And  this  is 
what  happened  in  time,  altho  Greek  comedy, 
when  taken  over  by  the  authorities,  was  appa- 
rently far  less  advanced  and  far  more  archaic  than 
Greek  tragedy  had  been  when  first  officially  regu- 
lated. In  the  earlier  dramatic  poems  of  Aeschylus 
we  perceive  tragedy  not  yet  developed  out  of  the 
dithyramb  and  struggling  to  find  its  own  form; 
and  so  in  the  earlier  comedies  of  Aristophanes  we  4 
discover  not  only  a  primitive  but  a  very  peculiar 
stage  of  the  evolution  of  the  comic  drama. 
79 


GREEK    AND    ROMAN   COMEDY 


III 


Close  as  Aeschylus,  with  his  dominating  chorus, 
sometimes  seems  to  the  earlier  rustic  lyric,  Aris- 
-f  tophanes  is  even  closer.  His  work  is  often  so 
formless,  his  story  is  sometimes  so  disconnected, 
his  plot  is  so  carelessly  put  together,  as  to  force  us 
to  the  conclusion  that  the  Greeks  had  not  yet  per- 
ceived the  need  in  the  comic  drama  for  that  unity 
which  is  so  striking  a  characteristic  of  their  greater 
tragedies.  Owing  to  this  slowness  of  the  Greeks 
in  evolving  a  type  of  pure  comedy,  as  they  had 
already  evolved  a  type  of  pure  tragedy,  the  works 
of  Aristophanes  impress  us  with  their  strangeness 
and  their  inequality.  Aristophanes  himself,  as 
we  see  him  in  his  plays,  appears  to  us  in  three 
aspects,  each  of  which  is  seemingly  incompatible 
with  either  of  the  others. 
I .  First  of  all,  he  is  indisputably  one  of  the  lofti- 
est lyric  poets  of  Greece,  with  a  surpassing 
strength  of  wing  for  his  imaginative  flights,  and 
with  a  surprising  sweep  of  vision  when  he  soars 

;?.  on  high.  Secondly,  he  is  the  bitterest  of  satirists, 
abounding  in  scorching  invective  for  his  political 
opponents,  and  never  refraining  from  any  vio- 
lence, any  malignity,  or  any  unfair  accusation  that 

S  would  help  the  cause  he  had  at  heart.     Thirdly, 
he  is  a  riotous  and  exuberant  humorist,  a  forerun- 
ner of  Rabelais,  reveling  in  sheer  fun  for  its  own 
80 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN  COMEDY 

sake,  heartily  enjoying  every  laugh  he  could  call 
forth  from  the  spectators,  and  ready  at  any  mo-  ^ 

ment  to  descend  to  any  depth  to  evoke  it  again,  j 
It  is  to  his  possession  of  these  triple  gifts  that  we 
may  ascribe  the  variety  of  opinions  held  about 
Aristophanes.  The  gifts  themselves  seem  in- 
congruous and  discordant,  and  the  result  of  their 
exercise  in  a  single  comic  play  is  sometimes  con- 
fusing. It  is  the  privilege  of  great  genius,  as 
Voltaire  maintained,  and,  "  above  all,  of  a  great 
genius  opening  a  new  path,  to  have  great  faults." 

What  seem  to  us  the  faults  of  Aristophanes  are  ^.--^^^ 
partly  due  to  his  having  opened  a  new  path,— to 
the  fact  that  comedy,  as  he  understood  it,  had 
not  yet  disentangled  itself  from  the  phallic  dance 
out  of  which  it  had  blossomed.  On  the  modern 
stage,  so  we  have  been  told,  there  are  three  kinds 
of  dancing,  the  graceful,  the  ungraceful,  and  the 
disgraceful;— and  there  need  be  no^  doubt  as  to 
which  adjective  can  best  be  applied  to  the  comic 
chorus  of  the  Greeks.  There  were  not  a  few  ^ 
lapses  into  vulgarity  on  the  part  of  the  Attic  audi- 
ences; and  there  was  at  times— as  a  historian  of 
Greek  literature  has  admitted—"  a  great  deficiency 
in  that  elegance  and  chastity  of  taste  "  which  we 
are  wont  to  associate  with  the  name  of  Athens. 

Aristophanes  is  a  lyrist  in  all  his  plays,  and  a 
satirist  also;  but  only  intermittently  is  he  a  comic 
dramatist,  concerned  especially  with  the  presen- 
8i 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN  COMEDY 

tation  of  humorous  characters  immeshed  in  amus- 
ing complications.  He  can  be  a  comic  dramatist 
when  he  chooses,  full  of  ingenuity  in  the  invention 
of  droll  situations;  but  he  does  not  often  choose, 

^  —preferring  the  satke^of  real  indjvkiuals  to  the 
presentatTon  of  ideal  ^characters.  This  satire  of 
real  individuals  is  so  abundant  in  his  plays  that 
we  may  see  in  them  the  Greek  equivalent  to  a 

I  collection  of  caricature-cartoons  from  a  modern 
comic  newspaper.  Like  most  modern  caricaturists, 
Aristophanes  is  a  bitter  partizan,  seeking  rather 
to  drive  his  point  home  than  to  be  fair  toward  his 
unfortunate  model.  In  most  of  his  plays  the  vic- 
tims of  his  invective  are  politicians;  but  some- 
times he  lays  his  scourge  across  the  shoulders  of 
a  philosopher  whose  influence  he  dreads,  or  of  an 
author  whose  verses  he  detests.     Thus,  in  the 

^  Clouds,'  it  is  Socrates  who  is  held  up  to  ridicule, 

4^and  in  the  *  Frogs '  it  is  Euripides.  Perhaps  the 
'  Frogs '  is  as  typical  of  the  lyrical-burlesque  of 
Aristophanes  as  any  other. 

The  play  opens  with  the  entrance  of  Dionysus 
and  his  slave  Xanthias  (personated  by  the  first 
and  second  actors)  into  the  circular  orchestra. 
As  the  patron  of  the  theater  Dionysus  is  saddened 
by  the  thought  that  there  is  now  no  good  drama- 
tist alive,  and  he  has  determined  to  go  down  to 
Hades  to  bring  back  Euripides.  For  this  perilous 
journey  he  has  disguised  himself  as  Heracles,  and 
82 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN  COMEDY 

has  come  to  get  the  advice  of  that  hero  himself. 
When  he  has  knocked  at  one  of  the  doors  of  the 
dressing-house  at  the  back  of  the  circular  orches- 
tra, Heracles  (the  third  actor)  comes  forth  and 
tells  him  of  the  various  ways  of  getting  to 
the  nether  world.  After  the  demigod  has  with- 
drawn, Xanthias  complains  of  the  weight  of  the 
bundles  with  which  he  is  burdened.  Just  then  a 
funeral  procession  passes  before  the  dressing- 
house,  which  formed  a  low  background  for  the 
figures  in  the  orchestra;  and  Dionysus  tries  in 
vain  to  get  the  bundles  carried  by  the  dead  man 
(apparently  played  by  a  fourth  actor),  who  refuses 
the  unsatisfactory  fee,  saying,  "  I  'd  see  myself 
alive  first." 

Neither  in  the  orchestra  itself  nor  on  the  front 
of  the  dressing-house  was  there  any  attempt  at 
scenery,  altho  by  the  time  of  Aristophanes  the 
dressing-house  itself  may  have  become  a  perma- 
nent erection,  possessing  a  certain  architectural 
dignity.  But  the  Greek  dramatist,  tragic  or  comic, 
made  no  effort  to  realize  to  the  eyes  of  the  spec- 
tators the  places  where  the  action  was  supposed 
to  happen ;  and  as  he  did  not  particularize,  they 
never  gave  a  thought  to  mere  locality.  Thus 
the  Athenian  orchestra,  like  the  stage  of  the 
Elizabethan  theater  two  thousand  years  later, 
was  a  neutral  ground  in  which  actions  were  ex- 
hibited, and  which  might  be  here,  there,  and  any- 
83 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN  COMEDY 

where,  as  the  plot  required.  Without  any  strain 
on  the  imagination,  the  orchestra  which  had  been 
tacitly  accepted  as  representing  an  open  space  in 
front  of  the  abode  of  Heracles  is  immediately 
thereafter  assumed  to  represent  the  shores  of  the 
Styx.  Charon  (the  third  actor  again)  comes  in, 
rowing  his  boat,— and  if  we  may  snatch  a  sug- 
gestion from  modern  burlesque,  it  is  quite  possible 
that  part  of  the  joke  here  lay  in  the  obvious  make- 
believe  of  Charon's  skiff,  which  was  perhaps  but 
a  bottomless  framework  hung  by  a  strap  from 
his  shoulders  as  he  walked  forward,  pretending  to 
paddle. 

Charon  goes  to  the  side  of  the  orchestra  where 
Dionysus  and  Xanthias  are  standing,  and  al- 
lows the  god  to  step  into  his  boat,  but  refuses  to 
take  the  slave,— who  thereupon  agrees  to  rejoin 
his  master  by  walking  around.  As  Charon  puts 
off  with  Dionysus,  who  pretends  to  help  with 
the  rowing,  part  of  the  chorus  enter,  dressed  as 
frogs.  These  inhabitants  of  the  sunless  marsh 
hoarsely  chant  a  characteristic  lyric  as  Charon  and 
Bacchus  propel  the  boat  through  the  midst,  of 
them.  Then,  as  the  two  voyagers  arrive  on  the 
other  side  of  the  orchestra,  the  chorus  of  frogs 
croaks  itself  off.  Dionysus  pays  his  fare  to 
Charon,  who  paddles  off  to  the  place  whence  he 
came, —probably  from  behind  the  dressing-house. 
Dionysus,  left  alone,  calls  for  Xanthias,  who  runs 
84 


GREEK   AND   ROMAN    COMEDY 

around  the  outer  circle  of  the  orchestra  to  rejoin 
his  master.  And  when  the  two  are  together 
again  the  orchestra  thereafter  is  supposed  to  rep- 
resent Hades,  the  under-world. 

Scared  by  the  strange  specters  he  now  pretends 
to  see,  Dionysus  appeals  for  protection  to  his  own 
priest,  whose  seat  was  among  the  spectators  and 
always  in  the  center  of  the  front  row.  In  this 
daring  unconventionality  we  may  see  an  antici- 
pation of  the  modern  comedian  who  leans  across 
the  footlights  to  make  fun  of  the  leader  of  the 
musicians;  just  as  the  attire  of  Dionysus,  doubt- 
fully disguised  as  Heracles,  had  elements  of  hu- 
morous incongruity  not  unlike  those  observable 
in  the  funny  man  of  to-day  who  wears  a  high  hat 
when  attired  in  a  Roman  toga. 

Then  to  the  sound  of  the  flute  there  revels  into 
the  orchestra  the  full  chorus,  impersonating  vota- 
ries of  Bacchus,  happy  shades  of  those  who  had 
been  duly  initiated  into  the  mysteries.  While  the 
two  visitors  look  on  with  humorous  comment, 
the  chorus  circles  in  and  out  with  song  and  dance. 
In  the  song  a  lofty  lyric  strain  is  broken  into  by 
topical  jests,  local  hits,  and  personal  allusions. 
In  the  dance  there  is  a  joyous  parody  of  those  who 
took  part  in  the  mystic  orgies.  At  last  Dionysus 
gets  the  chorus  to  tell  him-  which  is  the  gate  of 
Pluto's  realm ;  and  he  knocks  at  one  of  the  doors 
of  the  dressing-house,  declaring  himself  to  be 

85 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN  COMEDY 

Heracles.  Then  the  door  flies  open  and  out 
rushes  the  gate-keeper,  Aeacus  (the  third  actor), 
who  violently  berates  the  sham  Heracles  for  the 
misdeeds  of  the  real  demigod  on  his  visit  to  Hades. 
Dionysus  recoils  in  terror,  and  the  gate-keeper 
goes  to  summon  assistance. 

The  frightened  Dionysus  then  transfers  his 
lion-skin  and  club  to  Xanthias,  who  is  to  mas- 
querade as  Heracles.  But  when  a  maid-servant 
of  Proserpine's  (the  third  actor  again)  appears 
to  invite  Heracles  in  to  a  sumptuous  banquet, 
Dionysus  insists  upon  taking  back  the  emblems 
of  the  demigod— only  once  more  to  yield  them  up 
swiftly  when  two  eating-house  keepers  (the  third 
and  fourth  actors)  assail  the  false  Heracles  with 
bullying  demands  for  damage  done  on  the  demi- 
god's previous  visit.  Then  the  gate  opens  again, 
and  Aeacus  bids  his  aids  seize  the  false  Heracles, 
who  protests  his  innocence— and  proffers  his  slave 
to  be  tortured  in  proof  of  his  assertion.  There- 
upon Dionysus  declares  himself,  but  Xanthias 
maintains  his  claim,  so  Aeacus  has  them  flogged 
alternately  to  discover  which  is  the  god,— he 
being  the  one  who  will  not  feel  the  pain  of  the 
blows.  Altho  they  cry  out,  both  stand  the  test 
so  well  that  the  puzzled  Aeacus  takes  them  within 
for  Pluto  and  Proserpine  to  decide  which  is  truly 
the  god. 

The  chorus,  left  alone,  turns  to  the  spectators 

86 


GREEK    AND   ROMAN   COMEDY 

and  becomes  the  mouthpiece  of  the  satiric  drama- 
tist, delivering  what  is  called  the  parabasis,  and 
what  is  in  fact  a  personal  address  of  Aristophanes 
to  his  fellow-citizens  assembled  in  the  theater,— 
an  address  not  unlike  our  latter-day  after-dinner 
speech  on  themes  of  the  hour,  now  jocularly  per- 
sonal and  now  raising  itself  into  genuine  elo- 
quence. In  the  modern  drama  there  is  nothing 
exactly  corresponding  to  the  paj;^hasis,  altho  it  is 
sometimes  like  the  topical  song  of  a  modern 
burlesque  and  sometimes  it  resembles  rather  the 
prolog  of  a  comedy  of  Ben  Jonson's  or  Dryden's, 
not  prefixed  to  the  play,  however,  but  injected 
into  the  middle  of  it.  Like  these  prologs  often, 
and  like  the  topical  songs  generally,  the  parabasis 
had  nothing  to  do  with  the  plot  of  the  play. 

When  the  parabasis  is  concluded,  Aeacus  and 
Xanthias  return,  having  fraternized  as  fellow- 
servants,  delighting  to  spy  on  their  masters. 
The  noise  of  a  quarrel  is  heard ;  and  Aeacus  ex- 
plains that  this  is  Euripides  disputing  with  Aes- 
chylus, whose  seat  at  table  he  wishes  to  usurp. 
Aeacus  further  declares  that  as  Dionysus  is  the 
patron  of  tragedy,  Pluto  intends  to  let  the  new- 
comer decide  the  dispute.  The  two  slaves  with- 
draw; and  the  chorus  chants  a  lyric  description 
of  the  coming  contest. 

Then  Dionysus  comes  back  with  Aeschylus  (the 
second  actor)  and  Euripides  (the  third  actor);  and 
87 


GREEK   AND   ROMAN   COMEDY 

we  are  made  to  see  another  characteristic  feature 
of  Aristophanic  lyric-burlesque,  —the  ^^/,  the  dis- 
pute, which  has  almost  the  formality  of  a  trial  at 
law.  Aeschylus  and  Euripides  set  forth  in  turn 
their  views  of  tragic  art,  with  much  satiric  dis- 
tortion of  each  other's  theories,  and  with  much 
comic  perversion  of  each  other's  verses.  There 
is  incessant  cut-and-thrust  in  the  dialog,  and  ap- 
parently there  is  also  opportunity  for  frequent 
parody  of  the  actors  who  had  played  the  parts 
from  which  quotations  are  made.  There  is  frank 
burlesque  in  the  use  of  scales,  by  which  the  best 
lines  of  the  opposing  poets  are  weighed  in  turn; 
but  Dionysus  is  still  in  doubt  when  Pluto  (a  fourth 
actor)  enters  to  ask  for  his  decision.  Unable  to 
make  a  choice  on  literary  grounds,  Dionysus  asks 
the  advice  of  the  rival  dramatists  about  the  con- 
temporary political  conditions  of  Athens;  and  as 
he  finds  Aeschylus  to  be  the  wiser  counselor  and 
the  nobler,  it  is  the  elder  poet  that  he  resolves 
to  take  back  with  him  to  earth.  Pluto,  after 
authorizing  the  departure  of  Aeschylus,  and  after 
bidding  the  chorus  to  escort  him  triumphantly, 
withdraws  with  Euripides,  delaying  a  moment  to 
invite  Dionysus  to  remain  for  a  feast.  Once  more 
the  chorus  circles  around;  and  then,  accompanied 
by  Aeschylus,  it  trails  out  of  the  orchestra. 

The  *  Frogs '  is  a  delightful  example  of  the 
lyrical-burlesque  of  Aristophanes,  commingled  of 

88 


GREEK   AND   ROMAN   COMEDY 

poetry  and  of  personalities,  generous  in  parody, 
abundant  in  fun,  and  rich  in  artistic  criticism,— 
but  thin  in  plot  and  meager  in  dramatically  hu- 
morous situations  such  as  later  comic  dramatists  ^ 
have  delighted  to  devise.  It  represents  an  early 
period  of  literature,  when  the  several  species  are 
as  yet  imperfectly  differentiated;  and  it  is  in  fact 
almost  as  lyric  and  as  satiric  as  it  is  dramatic. 
The  story  is  straggling  and  the  structure  is  loose. 
Yet  a  lyrical-burlesque  of  this  sort  was  exactly 
suited  to  performance  at  the  Dionysiac  festival, 
when  the  season  was  held  to  sanction  every  con- 
ceivable license,  and  when  the  people  of  Athens^ 
were  so  conscious  of  their  freedom  that  they 
were  ready  to  laugh  at  jokes  against  themselves.  ' 

But  as  soon  as  the  Athenians  were  shorn  of 
their  liberties  the  play  of  this  type  became  quite 
impossible.  The  tyrants  would  no  longer  toler- 
ate it;  and  perhaps  the  people  would  no  longer 
relish  it.  Personalities  Were  prohibited  and  satire 
was  pruned.  The  comic  dramatist  became  cau- 
tious and  hesitating,  and  he  was  forced  to  seek 
his  theme  in  private  life  and  not  in  public  affairs. 
This  was  fatal  to  lyrical-burlesque ;  but  it  hastened 
the  development  of  a  true  comic  drama.  The 
plays  of  Aristophanes  were  the  product  of  special 
conditions  which  have  never  been  repeated,  and 
this  is  why  he  stands  in  a  class  by  himself;  he 
has  had  no  imitators  and  no  followers.  Modern 
89 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN  COMEDY 

comedy  owes  nothing  to  his  example;  and  even 
the  comedy  of  Menander,  which  was  evolved  from 
the  comedy  of  Aristophanes,  seems  to  have  speed- 
ily become  something  wholly  dissimilar. 

J  ♦  ,v 

The  comedy  of  Aristophanes  was  a  medley  of 
boisterous  comic-opera  and  of  lofty  lyric  poetry, 
of  vulgar  ballet  and  of  patriotic  oratory,  of  inde- 
cent farce  and  of  pungent  political  satire,  of  acro- 
batic pantomime  and  of  brilliant  literary  criticism,, 
of  cheap  burlesque  and  of  daringly  imaginative 
fantasy.  Obviously  most  of  these  elements  have 
no  necessary  relation  to  the  drama,  and  one  by 
one  they  were  eliminated.  The  political  person- 
alities had  to  go  first;  then  the  lyric  poetry  and 
the  imaginative  fantasy.  The  '  Plutus  '  of  Aris- 
tophanes himself  seems  to  be  a  specimen  of  this 
uncertain  transition  stage,  in  which  the  humor- 
ous poet  is  sadly  shorn  of  his  exuberance.  He 
is  not  content  to  deal  with  the  commonplaces 
of  every-day  life;  and  the  theme  he  treats  is  really 
a  fable,  or  rather  an  apolog.  Yet  in  '  Plutus  '  the 
absence  of  the  more  extravagant  elements  of  his 
lyrical-burlesques  brings  the  later  play  closer  to 
comedy  as  we  now  understand  it  than  were  the 
earlier  pieces. 

In  the  course  of  a  few  years  after  Aristophanes, 
90 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN  COMEDY 

Greek  comedy  still  further  simplified  itself.  It 
gave  up  the  parahasi^,  always  an  undiamatic- 
excrescence ;  and  it  surrendered  the,  rhorus,  thus 
abandoning  at  once  the  baUet_andLthe_gppra.  It 
made  up  for  the  loss  of  these  things  by  elaborat- 
ing the  more  dramatic  elements,  by  relying  more 
upon  the  delineation  of  charadjer,  and  by  giving 
more  thought  to  the  building  up  of  the  plot  and 
to  the  invention  of  comic  situations.  It  re- 
sponded also  to  the  influence  of  the  more  realistic 
treatment  of  life  which  Euripides  had  introduced 
inter  tragedy.  Indeed,  it  is  quite  possible  that 
there  was  a  fairly  close  agreement  in  method  and 
in  attitude  between  Euripides,  the  last  of  the  great 
writers  of  Greek  tragedy,  and  Menander,  the  first 
of  the  great  writers  of  Greek  comedy.  ^ 

In  the  plays  of  Aeschylus,  we  see  the  lyric  and 
the  dramatic  existing  side  by  sid|fe,  and  the  drama 
has  not  succeeded  in  making  t4Te|ong subservient. 
In  the  plays  of  Sophocles,  we  find  the  lyric  fused 
with  the  dramatic,  welded  into  it,  made  helpful 
to  the  tragic  story.  In  the  plays  of  Euripides,  we 
discover  that  the  chorus  lingers,  like  an  atrophied 
organ  which  the  dramatist  dared  not  amputate 
out  of  regard  for  tradition.  In  the  plays  of 
Menander,  we  note  that  the  needful  operation 
has  taken  place.  At  the  hands  of  Euripides  the 
chorus  serves  only  to  fill  out  the  lyric  interludes  of 
the  dramatic  action ;  and  it  is  this  entr'acte  music 
9» 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN  COMEDY 

that  Menander  omits.  Greek  tragedy  had  been 
lyric  in  its  origin,  and  was  perforce  poetic ;  where- 
as Greek  comedy,  after  Aristophanes,  was  free  to 
be  prosaic,  as  was  needful  in  dealing  more  directly 
with  the  facts  of  every-day  existence.  As  De 
Quincey  says,  it  is  ever  "  the  acknowledged  duty 
of  comedy  to  fathom  the  coynesses  of  human  na- 
ture, and  to  arrest  the  fleeting  phenomena  of 
human  demeanor." 

Unfortunately  for  us,  no  play  of  Menander's 
has  survived.  We  have  a  few  fragments  of 
scenes;  we  have  many  quoted  sentences;  we 
have  the  Latin  adaptations  of  Plautus  and  Ter- 
ence: but  we  have  not  a  single  play  complete,  by 
which  we  could  make  up  our  own  minds  as  to 
his  dramaturgic  skill.  We  can  judge  of  him  as  a 
poet  and  as  a  moralist  by  means  of  the  lines  pre- 
served here  and  there  by  his  admirers.  But  altho 
we  have  one  play  of  Terence's  which  seems  to 
have  been  derived  without  admixture  from  Me- 
nander, this  is  really  not  enough  to  justify  any 
judgment  as  to  his  play-making  faculty.  We 
do  not  know  much  more  about  Menander  as 
a  dramatist  than  we  should  know  about  Shak- 
spere  as  a  dramatist,  if  his  works  were  altogether 
lost,  and  if  all  we  had  left  were,  first,  the  librettos 
of  the  French  operas  which  had  been  founded  on 
his  plots,  and,  second,  the  extracts  in  some  dic- 
tionary of  *  Familiar  Quotations.'  We  are  at  lib- 
92 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN  COMEDY 

erty  to  guess  that  Menander  found  compensation 
for  his  sinking  from  the  lyric  heights  of  Aris- 
tophanes by  not  descending  to  the  depths  of  base 
vulgarity  in  which  the  earlier  poet  reveled.  We 
may  surmise  that  his  plays  were  often  genuine 
comedies  rather  than  mere  farces,— in  that  he 
sought  the  truth  of  life  itself  rather  than  the 
boisterous  laughter  evoked  by  exaggeration. 
Certainly  his  contemporaries  continually  testify  to 
the  veracity  of  his  scenes.  "On  the  stage,"  as 
Chamfort  declared,  ''the  aim  is  effect;  but  the 
difference  between  the  good  dramatist  and  the 
bad  is  that  the  former  seeks  effect  by  reasonable 
means,  while  for  the  latter  any  and  all  means  are 
excellent." 

In  other  words,  the  plays  of  Menander  seem  to 

have  been  an  antjdpation  of  the  modern  rnmpdy« 

of-intrigue  and  the  modern  comedy-^-rmanners. 
The  plots  were  ingenious  and  plausible,  and  they 
were  peopled  with  characters  common  in  Athens 
at  that  time;— the  miserly  father,  the  spendthrift 
son,  the  intriguing  servant,  the  braggart  soldier, 
the  obsecuious  parasite,  the  woman  of  pleasure, 
—and  here  in  this  last  type  we  find  the  most 
marked  difference  between  Menanderand  Moliere, 
for  example.  In  modern  comedy,  as  in  modern 
society,  women  occupy  many  conspicuous  posi- 
tions ;  but  in  Athens  respectable  women  took  no 
part  in  social  life,  remaining  at  home  and  caring 
93 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN  COMEDY 

for  their  households.  In  Greek  comedy,  therefore, 
women  are  little  seen,  and  those  who  do  appear 
belong  to  the  less  respectable  classes.  It  was 
impossible  for  Menander  to  treat  such  a  theme  as 
served  Moliere  in  the  'FemmesSavantes,'  Sandeau 
in  '  Mademoiselle  de  la  Seigliere,'  and  Ibsen  in  the 
*  Doll's  Home ' ;  and  here,  no  doubt,  is  the  most 
serious  limitation  of  Greek  comedy.  To  Me- 
nander himself  the  deprivation  is  most  inju- 
rious, since  he  obviously  possessed  the  delicacy 
of  perception  that  would  have  enabled  him 
to  handle  feminine  character  with  insight  and 
subtlety.  His  prevailing  tone,  as  Professor  J  ebb 
notes,  is  "  that  of  polite  conversation,  not  with- 
out passages  of  tender  sentiment,  grave  thought, 
or  almost  tragic  pathos." 
\.  Altho  the  chorus  had  disappeared  in  Menander's 
day,  the  tradition  of  the  mask  still  survived. 
The  mask  was  probably  a  pasteboard  head  not 
unlike  those  now  seen  in  our  comic  pantomimes; 
and  a  great  variety  of  them  had  been  modeled 
for  use  in  comedy,  each  of  which  served  to  declare 
at  once  the  character  of  the  wearer  and  to  an- 
nounce on  his  first  appearance  whether,  for  in- 
stance, he  was  a  dutiful  young  man  or  a  wanton 
prodigal.  Indeed,  there  were  said  to  be  ten  dis- 
tinct masks  available  for  the  several  young  men 
of  the  play,  nine  for  the  old  men,  and  seven  for 
the  slaves.  In  a  theater  so  vast  as  that  at  Athens, 
94 


GREEK   AND   ROMAN   COMEDY 

it  would  have  been  impossible  for  the  spectators 
to  perceive  the  changing  expression  and  the 
mobility  of  feature  which  on  the  modern  stage 
add  so  much  to  our  enjoyment.  Probably,  more- 
over, the  Athenian  of  old  was  no  more  annoyed 
by  the  facial  rigidity  of  the  masked  characters 
than  our  children  to-day  are  disturbed  by  the 
unchanging  countenances  of  Mr.  Punch  and  Mrs. 
Judy  and  of  Mr.  Punch's  other  wooden-headed 
friends. 


The  Greeks  were  clever  and  witty ;  they  were 
admirably  qualified  fgx,  comedy ;  and  their  lan- 
guage was  likewise  easy  and  flexible.  The 
Romans  who  conquered  them  and  who  fell  cap- 
tive to  their  charm  were  a  more  serious  people, 
not  so  likely  to  appreciate  the  comic  drama;  and 
their  language  was  a  lapidary  tongue,  grave  and 
concise  and  a  little  lacking  in  lightness  and  fluid- 
ity. Latin  reflects  perfectly  the  sanity,  the  solid- 
ity, the  robust  common  sense,  of  the  race  that 
spoke  it.  Altho  there  was  always  a  certain  aus- 
terity among  the  Romans,  a  certain  deficiency  in 
humor,  they  had  early  shown  their  appreciation 
of  the  primitive  comic  play  which  had  been  de- 
veloped by  their  neighbors,  the  Etrurians.  These 
Atellan  fables  seem  to  have  been  little  better  than 
crude  farces,  not  unlike  the  rough  rustic  plays  of 
95 


/ 


GREEK   AND   ROMAN   COMEDY 

the  Grecian  vintage-festivals  out  of  which  Greek 
comedy  had  been  evolved.  The  themes  of  these 
little  pieces  were  probably  as  vulgar  as  the  frag- 
ments of  dialog  that  have  been  preserved ;  and  the 
chief  characters  were  broadly  marked  rural  types, 
the  memory  of  which  may  have  survived  through 
the  empire  and  through  the  middle  ages  to  emerge 
again  in  certain  of  the  personages  of  the  Italian 
comedy-of-masks. 

However  low  in  language  these  early  attempts 
might  be,  and  however  rude  in  art,  they  could 
have  served  as  a  root  out  of  which  a  genuine 
Latin  comedy  might  have  been  developed,  if  the 
Romans  had  really  wanted  such  a  thing.  But 
before  this  coarse  Italic  humor  had  a  chance  to 
raise  itself  into  literature,  it  was  thrust  aside,  and 
its  place  was  taken  by  Latin  adaptations  of  Greek 
comedy.  The  native  comic  drama  that  had 
proved  its  power  to  please  the  populace  did  not 
die  of  this  neglect,— indeed,  it  seems  to  have  had 
a  sturdy  vitality;  but  it  was  deprived  of  the 
chance  of  artistic  development,  and  no  specimens 
of  it  have  been  preserved.  It  survived  humbly 
in  the  shadow  of  its  important  Greek  rival;  and 
yet,  long  after  all  traces  of  the  Latin  perversion 
of  the  Attic  drama  had  disappeared,  the  coarser 
Oscan  play  showed  signs  of  existence  in  the  nooks 
and  corners  of  the  peninsula.  Being  unliterary, 
a  drama  of  this  primitive  type  rarely  gets  itself 
96 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN  COMEDY 

recorded,  even  tho  it  continues  to  please  the  un- 
cultivated public. 

The  earlier  Roman  attitude  tov^ard  the  arts  had 
been  a  little  contemptuous;  but  this  changed 
when  they  began  to  apprehend  the  beauty  of, 
Greek  civilization.  Having  discovered  that  Greek 
culture  was  valuable,  the  Romans,  being  a  prac- 
tical people,  proceeded  at  once  to  import  it, 
wholesale,  and  in  the  original  package.  Their 
dramatists  became  adapters,  taking  the  plots  of 
the  plays  of  Menand^r  and  of  Menander's  clever 
contemporaries,  and  transferring  these  into  Latin, 
leaving  the  scene  in  Athens,  but  inserting  an 
abundance  of  local  allusions  to  Roman  manners. 
They  kept  the  types  of  character  which  the 
Athenian  dramatist  had  observed  and  which  often 
had  only  rare  counterparts  in  Rome;  the  braggart 
coward,  for  example,  was  a  Greek  and  not  a 
Roman,— the  Greek  had  no  stomach  for  fighting, 
whereas  the  Roman  had  shortened  his  sword 
and  enlarged  his  boundaries.  As  a  result  this  j 
Latin  comic  drama  is  singularly  unreal,  —as  unreal  "1 
as  certain  English  adaptations  from  the  French 
and  the  German,  in  which  we  feel  a  blank  incon- 
gruity between  the  foreign  code  of  manners  on 
which  the  story  is  conditioned  and  the  supposedly 
Anglo-Saxon  characters  by  which  it  has  to  be 
carried  out. 

Nor  was  this  the  sole  disadvantage  under  which 
97 


GREEK    AND   ROMAN   COMEDY 

Latin  comedy  labored,  for  the  circumstances  of 
its  performance  were  also  disastrous.  Plays 
were  provided  regularly  three  times  a  year  by  the 
city  authorities,  and  also  at  irregular  intervals  when 
la  high  functionary  took  office  or  when  a  great 
dignitary  died.  The  actors  were  often  slaves, 
who  might  expect  a  beating  if  they  failed  to  be 
applauded,  and  who  might  hope  for  their  freedom 
I  if  they  succeeded  in  pleasing  the  public.      The 

"1  performances  took  place  in  huge  theaters  modeled 
upon  that  in  Athens,  except  that  two  important 
changes  were  made:  the  orchestra,  being  no 
longer  needed  for  the  dance  of  the  chorus,  was 
reserved  for  the  seats  of  the  more  important  offi- 
cials,—and  therefore,  in  order  that  these  specta- 
tors might  see,  the  dressing-house  was  lowered 
and  brought  forward,  so  that  its  roof  might  serve 
as  a  stage.  But  of  these  officials  and  of  the  mem- 
bers of  the  upper  circles  there  were  few  likely 
often  to  be  present;  and  owing  to  this  absence  of 
the  more  cultivated  public,  a  Roman  audience  did 

1  not  represent  all  classes  of  the  community  like 

the   Athenian    audience— and   like  the   London 

and  Parisian  audiences  to  which  Shakspere  and 

Moliere  were  to  appeal. 

The  audience  which  the  Latin  dramatist  had  to 

j^  try  to  please  was  the  roughest  and  most  stubborn 
of  any  known  to  the  history  of  the  theater.   It  con- 

^  tained  chiefly  men  of  the  lower  orders— andvery 

98  "^"^ 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN  COMEDY 

few  of  these  were  natives,  for  the  Roman  was 
serving  abroad  as  a  soldier  or  settled  as  a  colonist, 
while  his  city  was  filled  with  a  riffraff  of  rustics 
and  strangers,  uncouth  barbarians  many  of  them, 
prisoners  of  war,  and  freedmen,  ignorant  and 
brutal,  knowing  just  enough  Latin  to  make  it 
serve  as  a  lingua  franca.  Any  delicacy  would  be  / 
wasted  on  a  crowd  like  this;  and  no  jest  could 
be  too  gross  or  too  violent  to  amuse  coarse  crea- 
tures whose  chief  joy  had  been  in  the  bloody 
sports  of  the  arena.  [Sometimes  Gresham's  law 
seems  as  imperative  in  the  drama  as  in  finance; 
the  lower  tends  to  drive  out  the  higher,— at  least, 
we  all  know  that  the  theaters  of  New  York 
have  a  barren  fortnight  when  a  huge  circus 
comes  to  town.  It  is  no  wonder  Terence  com- 
plained that  one  of  his  plays  was  twice  deserted 
by  the  spectators,  who  were  suddenly  tempted 
away  by  the  report  of  more  violent  delights  else- 
where. 

VI 

Before  a  mob  of  this  sort,  the  Latin  dramatist  :^ 
sought  especially  to  make  his  plot  clgaj;  and  he 
was  afraid  of  no  reiteration  to  avoid  misunder- 
standing. He  could  not  count  on  any  intelligence 
of  comprehension,  and  so  we  find  at  the  begin- 
ning of  one  of  his  plays  a  prolog  in  which  is 
set  forth  the  exact  situation  at  the  opening  of  the 
99 


GREEK    AND   ROMAN   COMEDY 

Story,  and  which  then  proceeds  to  tell  in  advance 
what  the  plot  was  going  to  be,  returning  finally 
to  explain  again  the  state  of  affairs  at  the  moment 
when  the  action  was  to  open.  Ut  is  doubtful 
whether  all  the  prologs  as  we  have  them  are  the 
work  of  Plautus  himself;  and  it  is  true  that  this 
explanation  may  have  been  distended  simply 
to  allow  more  time  for  the  turbulent  folk  still 
standing  to  find  seats,  or  at  least  to  settle  them- 
selves in  their  places.  But  even  if  the  prolog  is 
thus  made  to  serve  as  a  substitute  for  the  overture 
of  the  modern  theater,  there  is  something  pitiful 
in  the  precise  prolixity  of  Plautus,  so  afraid  that 
the  most  stupid  may  fail  to  catch  some  essential 
point.  Yet  the  attitude  of  the  Roman  dramatist 
is  only  an  exaggeration  of  that  recommended 
by  the  old  London  stage-manager  who  said  that 
if  you  want  the  British  public  to  understand  any- 
thing, you  must  tell  them  you  are  going  to  do  it, 
next  you  must  tell  them  you  are  doing  it,  and  at 
last  you  must  tell  them  you  have  done  it,— '*and 
then,  confound  'em,  perhaps  they'll  understand 
you!" 

The  stage  was  a  mere  strip  of  platform  in  front 
of  a  wide  architectural  background.  In  the  later 
Roman  theaters,  in  that  of  Orange  for  instance, 
this  rear  wall  had  become  a  stately  elevation  with 
three  elaborate  doorways  and  with  decorative 
statuary.     But  even  in  the  time  of  Plautus  this 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN  COMEDY 

background,  altho  only  a  temporary  erection  of 
wood,  contained  doors  which  served  to  designate 
the  homes  of  certain  of  the  characters.  In  the 
'Captives,'  for  example,  the  speaker  of  the  pro- 
log tells  the  spectators  explicitly  that  a  father  who 
has  lost  his  son  dwells  in  the  house  on  the  right, 
and  that  another  father  who  has  also  lost  his  son 
lives  in  the  house  on  the  left;  and  two  of  the 
doors  in  the  rear  wall  were  sufficient  to  represent 
these  two  domiciles. 

The  actors  did  not  wear  masks.  Many  of  their  -^ 
speeches  were  accompanied  by  a  soloist  on  the 
flute.  Some  of  these  passages  were  declaimed  to 
this  accompaniment,  thus  resembling  the  recita- 
tive of  modern  opera;  and  some  were  actually 
sung  to  set  tunes.  Indeed,  we  are  told  that 
sometimes  a  singer  came  forward  to  the  side  of 
the  actor  to  deliver  these  lyrical  passages  while  the 
comedian  merely  made  the  appropriate  gestures, 
—a  convention  which  seems  to  us  monstrous, 
but  which  in  itself  is  perhaps  no  more  absurd 
than  the  full  orchestra  accompanying  the  song  of 
Amiens  far  in  the  depths  of  the  Forest  of  Arden. 
/The  first  duty  of  the  Roman  dramatist  was  to 
u&  so  clear  that  the  stupid  spectators  could  not 
fail  to  follow  the  successive  situations ;  and  his 
second  obligation,  even  more  difficult,  was  to 
move  to  mirth  his  miscellaneous  and  uneducated 
audienceA    Altho  in  theory  Roman  comedy  was 

lOI 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN  COMEDY 

only  Greek  comedy  written  in  Latin,  and  altho 
Roman  comedy  was  therefore  supposed  to^deal 
with  Athenian  life  and  manners,  as  a  matter  of 
fact  the  Latin  dramatists  managed  to  get  into 
their  plays  not  a  little  of  the  local  color  of  their 
own  city.  Plautus  especially,  not  knowing  him- 
self much  about  Athenian  life  and  manners,  and 
well  aware  that  his  uncultivated  Roman  audience 
knew  still  less  and  cared  nothing  at  all,  — Plautus 
dealt  very  freely  with  his  Greek  original. 

The  scene  of  his  plays  is  always  supposed  to 
be  in  Athens,  but  Plautus  continually  draws  on 
his  own  intimate  knowledge  of  the  Roman  popu- 
lace. He  had  a  thorough  acquaintance  with  the 
speech,  the  methods,  the  every-day  actions,  of  the 
very  class  from  which  was  collected  the  audience 
to  which  he  appealed.  It  was  his  object  to  make 
this  audience  laugh,  and  he  could  do  it  by  show- 
ing them  as  they  lived,  by  local  allusions,  by  a 
humorous  reproduction  of  their  sayings  and  their 
doings.  Plautus  no  more  tries  deliberately  to 
mirror  Athenian  habits  and  deeds  than  Shakspere 
—in  giving  us  Dogberry  and  Verges— tried  to 
mirror  the  ways  of  speech  and  the  judicial  customs 
of  Sicily.  In  spite  of  his  professed  Greek  original, 
Plautus  was  really  giving  a  picture  of  low  life  in 
Rome,  as  broadly  humorous  and  as  fundamentally 
veracious  as  the  picture  of  low  life  in  New  York 
which    was    visible   in    Mr.    Harrigan's    comic 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN  COMEDY 

dramas,  such  as  'Squatter  Sovereignty'  for  ex- 
ample. 

Here  Plautus  was  apparently  availing  himself 
of  the  direct  methods  of  the  earlier  native  comedy 
of  the  Italians,  of  the  Atellan  fables,  and  of  Fes- 
cennine  satire;  and  this  is  just  what  a  born  dra- 
matist would  do  instinctively,  even  tho  he  had  to 
follow  a  foreign  plot.  There  is  no  denying  that 
Plautus  was  a  born  dramatist,— born  out  of  time, 
unfortunately,  and  fallen  upon  evil  days.  The 
circumstances  of  the  theater  did  not  encourage  or 
even  permit  his  full  development.  But  even  if 
he  was  taking  over  his  plot  from  Menander,  he  was 
strikingly  fresh  in  his  sketches  of  life  among  the 
lowly  as  he  knew  it  in  Rome.  He  was  vulgar, 
no  doubt,  but  vulgarity  was  perhaps  what  his 
rude  audience  most  relished ;  and  altho  frank  and 
plain-spoken,  he  was  not  as  indecorous  as  Aristo- 
phanes, and  he  was  never  so  indecent  as  Wy- 
cherley.  He  had  a  hearty  gaiety  as  well  as  a 
broad  humor;  indeed,  in  comic  force,  in  vis 
comica,  in  the  sheer  power  of  compelling  laugh- 
ter, he  can  withstand  a  comparison  even  with 
Moliere,  the  greatest  of  all  comic  dramatists. 


vn 

This  comic  force  is  just  what  was  lacking  in  Ter- 
ence.   Where  Plautus  was  plebeian  in  his  point  of 
105 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN  COMEDY 

view,  Terence  was  patrician.  Plautus  was  a  practi- 
cal playwright,  and  Terence  was  a  cultivated  man- 
of-letters.  Plautus  was  invaluable  for  the  informa- 
tion he  has  indirectly  given  us  about  the  life  of  the 
Roman  populace;  Terence  was  valuable  chiefly  be- 
cause his  scholarly  translations  have  preserved  for 
us  not  a  few  of  the  best  of  Menander's  comedies. 
Plautus  dealt  freely  with  the  works  of  the  Greek 
dramatists,  knowing  that  his  audience  was  eager 
to  be  amused  by  bold  buffoonery,  while  Terence 
sought  to  give  a  high  literary  polish  to  his  faith- 
ful renderings  of  Greek  plays  of  a  graceful  ele- 
gance, altho  he  knew  they  were  to  be  acted  before 
spectators  incapable  of  appreciating  either  ele- 
gance or  grace.  It  is  no  wonder  that  the  comedies 
of  the  later  writer  failed ;  he  lacked  the  instinct  of 
the  born  dramatist,  who  cannot  help  feeling  the 
pulse  of  his  contemporaries  and  responding  to 
their  unspoken  demands.  Terence  had  to  wait  for 
a  fit  audience  until  his  plays  were  performed  in 
the  Italian  Renascence  before  an  assembly  of  cul- 
tivated scholars,  abundantly  capable  of  appreciat- 
ing his  refinement. 

It  has  been  suggested  that  there  was  in  Me- 
nander  something  of  the  well-bred  ease  of  the 
man  of  the  world,  such  as  we  see  it  in  Thackeray, 
and  that  in  Terence  there  is  rather  the  terseness 
and  high  finish  of  Congreve.  Certainly  Ter- 
ence is  like  Congreve  in  that  he  was  of  importance 
104 


GREEK   AND   ROMAN   COMEDY 

rather  as  a  man-of-letters  than  as  a  dramatist. 
He  was  essentially  a  stylist,  concerned  rather  with 
his  manner  than  with  his  matter.  Indeed,  as  his 
comedies  dealt  with  the  life  of  Athens,  which  he 
did  not  know  at  first  hand,  and  not  with  the  life 
of  Rome,  which  he  could  not  help  knowing,  and 
in  the  language  of  which  he  was  writing,  he  can- 
not be  acquitted  of  unreality  and  artificiality.  He 
had  at  times  a  haughty  melancholy  of  his  own; 
and  he  resented  the  stupidity  of  the  public,  inca- 
pable of  seeing  the  surpassing  merit  of  his  trans- 
parent translations.  But  he  had  no  roots  in  the 
soil;  he  was  not  only  content  to  be  an  imitator: 
he  was  even  proud  of  being  second-hand;  and 
what  he  strove  for  was  at  best  but  a  reflected 
glory.  This  was  indeecfthe  fatal  defect  of  the  Latin  Min44 
drama,— that  the  Romans  were  satisfied  with  a 
colonial  attitude  in  all  matters  of  art.  They  had 
conquered  the  Greeks  politically ;  but  the  Greeks 
had  taken  them  captive  intellectually.  Instead  of 
developing  the  native  drama,  and  elevating  it  into 
literature  by  giving  it  form  and  substance,  they 
preferred  to  dwell  in  servile  deference  to  the 
greater  Greeks. 

A  dramatic  literature  is  necessarily  conditioned 
by  the  audience  for  which  it  is  intended.     A  mob 
of  lewd  fellows  of  the  baser  sort  will  demand 
plays  fitted  to  their  low  likings;  and  this  is  one- 
reason  why  the  Romans,  with  all  their  ability,^ 
105 


GREEK   AND   ROMAN   COMEDY 

failed  to  hav  e  a  worthy  ramatic  literature— their 
theater  was  abandoned  to  the  vulgar.  On  the 
other  hand,  there  is  danger  also  if  the  dramatist  is 
forced  to  please  only  the  cultivated,  who  are  ever 
prone  to  apply  personal  and  dilettante  standards; 
and  it  is  this  which  accounts  for  the  sterility  of 
the  Weimar  theater  when  it  was  controlled  by 
Goethe.  But  in  the  Elizabethan  theater,  altho  the 
rude  and  boisterous  groundlings  filled  the  yard, 
there  were  city  madams  in  the  rooms  above,  and 
there  were  gallants  sitting  on  the  stage  itself;  and 
altogether  the  playwright  had  before  him  a  rep- 
resentative public.  So  Moliere,  inventing  certain 
of  his  comedies  for  the  court  of  the  king,  always 
counted  on  bringing  them  out  later  in  his  own 
theater  for  the  joy  of  the  burghers  of  Paris.  Yet 
it  may  be  doubted  whether  any  audience  to  be 
found  in  Paris  under  Louis  XIV,  or  in  London 
under  Elizabeth,  was  as  carefully  trained  to  under- 
stand and  to  appreciate,  or  was  as  delicately  dis- 
criminating in  its  taste,  as  those  which  in  Athens 
flocked  to  behold  the  tragedies  of  Sophocles  and 
the  comedies  of  Menander. 


io6 


IV.    THE  MEDIEVAL  DRAMA 


THE  Greeks,  from  the  rudest  beginnings,  and  -^ 
by  the  aid  of  their  incomparable  instinct  for  ^ 
form,  brought  to  perfection  a  lofty  type  of  tra-  "* 
gedy  and  an  original  kind  of  comedy.    The  Latins, 
who  had  at  least  the  germ  of  a  comic  drama  of 
their  own,  were  proud  to  borrow  the  comedy  of 
the  Greeks,  altho  in  their  hands  it  could  not  but 
be  sadly  sterile.  ^^  in  the  stalwart  days  of  the 
Roman  commonwealth  the  drama  seems  to  have_^ 
had  scant  encouragement  in  the  capital,  either 
from  the  men  of  culture  or  from  the  coarser  popu- 
lace.    When  at  last  the  empire  solidified  itself 
upon  the  ruins  of  the  republic,  and  the  eagles  of 
Rome  were  borne  almost  to  the  confines  of  the 
world,  the  cosmopolitan  inhabitants  of  this  im- 
mense realm  were  never  educated  to  appreciate  { 
the  calm  pleasures  of  the  theater.      They  were 
encouraged  to  prefer  the  fierce  joy  of  the  chariot-  _ 
race,  the  brutal  delight  of  the  arena,  and  the  poi- 
gnant ecstasy  of  the  gladiatorial  combat.  The  sole 
107 


THE   MEDIEVAL   DRAMA 

vestiges  of  the  true  drama  were  the  vulgar  farces 
of  the  rustics  that  lingered  in  odd  corners  of  Italy,  " 
and  the  obscene  and  cruel  pantomimes  which 
were  devised  to  gratify  the  relish  of  the  mob  for 
lewdness  and  to  glut  its  liking  for  gore.  Neither 
the  rough  comic  plays  of  the  peasants  nor  the 
abominable  pantomimes  of  the  court  had  any 
relation  to  literature. 

After  the  conversion  of  Constantine,  the  lust- 
ful and  bloody  spectacles  were  accurst  by  the 
church.  It  was  to  be  expected  that  the  Fathers* 
should  condemn  the  theater  absolutely,  since  it 
was— in  the  sole  aspect  in  which  they  had  occa- 
sion to  behold  it— unspeakably  vile.  With  the 
triumph  of  Christianity  theatrical  performances  ' 
were  abolished;  and  it  must  have  seemed  as  tho 
the  drama  was  destroyed  forever.  It  is  true  that 
in  some  obscure  nooks  rural  farces  might  lingerf*' 
forgotten  links  in  the  chain  that  was  to  stretch 
from  the  Atellan  fables  to  the  late  Italian  comedy- 
of-masks.  But  this  doubtful  survival  seems  to 
have  little  significance,  and  apparently  the  break  in 
the  tradition  of  the  theater  was  final  and  irrepara- 
ble. When  Constantinople  supplanted  Rome  as 
the  capital  of  civilization,  dramatic  literature, 
which  had  been  a  chief  glory  of  Athens,  ceased 
from  off  the  earth.  For  athousand  j^ars  and 
more  the  hjstory  of  the  drama  is  all^arkness  and 
vacancy;  and  we  have  not  a  singfe  name  recorded 
108 


THE   MEDIEVAL   DRAMA 

of  any  author  writing  plays  to  be  performed  by 
actors,  in  a  theater,  before  an  audience. 

The  desire  for  the  drama,  which  seems  to  be 
instinctive  in  human  nature  the  wide  world  over, 
from  the  Aleutian  Islanders  to  the  Bushmen  of 
Australia,  the  impulse  to  personate^  and  lotalce 
pleasure  in  beholding  a  story  set  forth  in  action, 
—this  may  have  been  dormant  during  the  long 
centuries,  or  it  may  have  found  some  means  of 
gratifying  itself  unrecorded  in  the  correspondence  -*. 
of  the  time  or  by  the  chroniclers.  Acrobats  there 
were,  and  wandering  minstrels;  and  now  and 
again  we  catch  glimpses  of  singers  of  comic 
songs  and  of  roving  amusers  who  entertained 
with  feats  of  sleight-of-hand,  or  who  exhibited 
trained  animals.  These  performers,  always  pop- 
ular with  the  public  at  large,  were  also  called 
in  upon  occasion  to  enliven  the  solid  feasts  of  the 
rulers.  Gibbon  records  that  at  the  supper-table 
of  Theodoric,  in  the  middle  of  the  fifth  century, 
buffoons  and  performers  of  pantomimes  were 
"  sometimes  introduced  to  divert,  not  to  offend, 
the  company  by  their  ridiculous  wit."  And 
Froissart  records  that  when  he  was  a  guest  at  the 
court  of  Gaston  Phebus,  toward  the  end  of  the 
fourteenth  century,  strolling  jesters  sometimes  ( 
presented  a  little  play  during  the  repast,  or  acro- 
bats went  through  their  daring  performances. 
The  entertainments  described  by  Gibbon  and  by 
nop 


THE  MEDIEVAL   DRAMA 

Froissart,  however  long  the  interval  between 
them,  bear  an  obvious  likeness  to  our  latter-day 
"vaudeville  suppers." 

But  none  the  less  dramatic  literature,  which 
had  flourished  so  gloriously  in  Greece,  and  which  ^ 
had  tried  to  establish  itself  in  Italy,  was  dead  at 
last;  and  even  the  memory  of  it  seems  to  have 
departed,  for,  in  so  far  as  the  works  of  the  Attic 
tragedians  and  of  the  Roman  comedians  were 
known  at  all,  they  were  thought  of  rather  as 
poetry  to  be  read  than  as  plays  that  had  been 
acted.     The  art  of  acting  was  a  lost  art,  and  thel 
theaters  themselves  fell  into  ruin.     So  it  was  thaf'^ 
when  the  prejudice  against  the  drama  wore  itself 
out  in  time,  and  when  the  inherent  demand  for 
the  pleasure  which  only  the  theater  can  give  be- 
came at  last  insistent,  there  was  to  be  seen  the 
spontaneous   evolution   of  a    new  form,   fitted 
specially  to  satisfy  the  needs  of  the  people  under 
the   new  circumstances.     This   new  drama  of 
the  middle  ages  sprang  into  being  wholly  unin- 
fluenced by  the  drama  of  the  Greeks ;  it  was,  in- 
deed, as  free  a  growth  as  the  Attic  drama  itself 
had  been. 
)In  its  origin  agafti,  the  medieval  drama  was  not . 
\  unlike  the  drama  of  the  Greeks, —in  that  the  germ  [ 
of  it  was  religious,^nd  that  it  was  slowly  elabo- 
rated from  what  was  at  first  only  a  casual  accom- 
paniment of  public  worship.     The  new  form  had 
119 


THE   MEDIEVAL   DRAMA 

its  birth  actually  at  the  base  of  the  altar  and  at } 
the  foot  of  the  pulpit;  and  it  was  fostered  by  the  i 
Christian  church,  the  very  organization  that  had 
cursed  the  old  form  when  that  was  decadent  and 
corrupted.  Coming  into  being  as  an  illustrative 
incident  of  the  service  on  certain  special  days  of 
the  ecclesiastical  year,  the  drama  grew  sturdily 
within  the  walls  of  the  church  until  it  was  strong 
enough  to  support  itself;  and  when  at  last  it  ven- 
tured outside,  it  remained  for  a  long  while  reli-^ 
gious  in  intent.  The  history  of  its  development 
is  very  much  the  same  throughout  Europe;  and 
the  religious  drama  of  England  is  very  like  that 
of  France  (from  which,  indeed,  it  is  in  some 
measure  derived),  just  as  the  religious  drama  of 
Italy  is  like  that  of  Spain,  altho  neither  of  these 
had  any  appreciable  influence  on  the  otheiO 

The  reason  for  this  uniformity  is  ^vious 
enough.  It  was  due  to  the  double  unity  of  the 
medieval  world,— that  whiclT resulted  from  p^s^ 
session  of  the  same  religion  and  that  which  was 
caused  by  the  consciousness  of  a  former  union 
underihe  rule  of  Rome.  All  the  peoples  of  west- 
ern Europe  had  inherited  the  same  customs  and 
the  same  traditions,  because  they  had  all  been  in- 
cluded in  the  RomanEmpire,  which  had  stretche 
itself  from  the  Black  Sea  to  the  Atlantic.  wHien, 
at  last,  the  vigor  of  the  Roman  government  was 
relaxed,  the  barbarians  of  the  north  had  broken  in, 
III 


THE   MEDIEVAL    DRAMA 

and  had  swept  through  southern  Europe  into 
Africa  and  into  Asia.  The  Franks  had  taken  Gaul 
for  their  own,  the  Goths  had  repopulated  Italy, 
and  the  Vandals  had  traversed  Spain ;  and  as  they 
had  all  of  them  accepted  Christianity,  sooner  or 
later,  the  most  distant  lands  had  once  more  come 
under  the  sway  of  Rome. 

This  is  why  it  is  that  we  find  in  the  middle 
ages  a  unity  of  western  and  southern  Europe 
closer  than  ever  before  or  ever  since.  Just  before 
the  Renascence,  the  peoples  of  all  these  varied 
stocks,  however  much  they  might  differ  individu- 
ally, were  bound  together  by  the  common  use  of 
the  Latin  language  and  by  the  common  dominion 
of  the  Roman  law;  they  held  the  same  beliefs 
and  they  yielded  to  the  same  superstitions;  they 
revered  the  same  ideals,  they  acted  on  the  same 
theories,  and  they  had  very  much  the  same  habits. 
As  yet  the  idea  of  nationality  had  not  been  born; 
and  the  solidarity  of  those  speaking  each  of  the 
modern  languages  had  not  been  suggested.  Eu- 
rope was  a  unit  because,  altho  it  was  segregated 
into  towns  and  even  into  small  provinces,  these 
had  not  yet  been  compacted  into  distinct  nations. 
Towns  and  provinces  and  kingdoms  were  all  in 
accord  in  accepting  the  supremacy  of  the  pontiff 
of  Rome  and  in  yielding  a  doubtful  allegiance  to 
the  head  of  the  shadowy  monarchy  which  was 
still  called  the  Holy  Roman  Empire. 

112 


THE   MEDIEVAL   DRAMA 


To  declare  with  certainty  just  where  it  was  that 
the  new  drama  first  gave  sign  of  life  is  quite  im- 
possible; and  it  is  equally  impossible  to  decide 
whether  it  sprang  up  of  its  own  accord  in  half  a  - 
dozen  different  places,  or  whether  the  first  tempt-— 
ing  suggestion  of  it  was  carried  abroad  from  the 
church  of  its  origin  for  adoption  in  churches 
widely  scattered.  There  was  far  more  migration 
in  the  middle  ages  than  is  admitted  by  those  who 
consider  them  merely  as  a  long  period  of  stagna- 
tion. Priests  and  merchants  were  continually 
passing  from  one  city  to  another  a  thousand  miles 
distant;  and  as  the  most  of  Europe  was  included 
in  the  Holy  Roman  Empire,  and  as  it  acknow- 
ledged also  the  sway  of  the  Roman  Pope,  men 
could  remove  from  the  east  to  the  west,  and  from 
the  south  to  the  north,  with  no  feeling  that  they 
were  relinquishing  their  nationality,  especially 
as  the  priests,  at  least,  could  make  themselves 
understood  everywhere  in  the  same  tongue. 

Latin  was  the  language  of  the  church  and  of  its  ^ 
liturgy  ;(_and  it  is  out  of  the  Latin  liturgy  of  the  j^ 
Christian  church  that  the  drama  of  the  modern 
European  languages  has  been  slowly  developedj^^^ 
It  is  not  possible  to  trace  all  the  steps  by  which 
a  very  brief  semi-dramatic  adjunct  of  the  service 
of  certain  special  days  of  the  ecclesiastical  year 
"3 


THE   MEDIEVAL   DRAMA  • 

was  slowly  elaborated  into  a  more  or  less  com- 
plete dramatic  scene;  and  it  is  difficult  to  declare 
just  how  it  was  that  these  several  scenes  were  in 
time  detached  from  the  liturgy  and  combined  to- 
gether in  a  cycle  which  presented  the  chief  events 
of  the  gospel-story.  But  it  is  practicable  to  prove 
that  there  was  a  steady  growth,  beginning  with 
a  single  brief  scene  acted  within  the  church,  by 
the  priests,  in  Latin,  and  almost  as  part  of  the 
liturgy,  and  developing,  in  the  course  of  time, 
into  a  sequence  of  scenes,  acted  by  laymen  out- 
side the  church,  in  the  vernacular,  and  wholly 
disconnected  from  the  service. 

The  Christian  church  had  so  arranged  its  calen- 
dar that  every  one  of  the  chief  events  in  the  career 
of  Jesus  was  regularly  commemorated  in  the 
course  of  the  year.  Its  liturgy  was  rich  in  sym- 
bolism; and  as  the  ritual  was  not  everywhere 
uniform,  opportunites  were  frequent  for  sugges- 
tive variations  devised  by  the  devout  priests,  who 
were  diligently  seeking  the  means  by  which  they 
could  best  bring  home  the  central  truths  of  reli- 
gion to  a  very  ignorajit  congregation.  In  many 
churches,  for  example,  the  crucifix  was  removed 
from  the  altar  on  Good  Friday  and  borne  to  a  re- 
ceptacle supposed  to  represent  the  sepulcher, 
whence  it  was  taken  on  Easter  morning  to  be  re- 
stored solemnly  to  the  altar,  in  testimony  of  the 
Resurrection. 

114 


THE  MEDIEVAL   DRAMA 

The  gospel-Story  is  rarely  pure  narrative;  as  it 
is  to  be  expected  in  the  accounts  of  eye-witnesses, 
it  abounds  in  actual  dialog.  And  where  a  dra- 
matic passage  was  included  in  the  service  nothing 
was  easier  or  more  natural  than  to  let  the  narra- 
tive be  read  by  the  officiating  priest,  while  as- 
signing the  actual  dialog  to  other  priests,  each  of 
whom  should  deliver  the  speeches  of  a  single 
character.  Thus  on  Easter  morning,  in  the  col- 
loquy between  Saints  Peter  and  John  and  the 
three  Marys,  when  the  apostles  ask  what  had 
been  seen  at  the  sepulcher,  each  of  the  three 
Marys  can  answer  in  turn.  In  time  this  inter- 
change of  dialog  would  lend  itself  to  amplifica- 
tion; and  there  is  preserved  a  Latin  manuscript 
in  which  the  scene  at  the  sepulcher  was  presented 
both  in  dialog  and  in  action.  In  this  interpolation 
into  the  Easter  service,  the  three  Marys,  Saint  Peter 
and  Saint  John,  and  "  One  in  the  likeness  of  a 
gardener,"  all  impersonated  by  priests  or  choir- 
boys, speak  the  words  set  down  for  them  in  the 
sacred  text,  and  do  whatever  is  there  recorded  of 
them. 

Altho  scenes  of  this  sort  seem  to  have  been  first 
invented  to  embellish  the  Easter  services,  Christ- 
mas was  soon  discovered  to  offer  an  equal  oppor- 
tunity. For  example,  one  of  the  very  earliest  of 
these  enlargements  of  the  ritual  showed  the  quest 
of  the  shepherds.  At  the  proper  moment  certain 
'•5 


THE   MEDIEVAL    DRAMA 

priests  holding  crooks  in  their  hands  are  to  be 
seen  standing  in  the  transept,  and  a  chorister 
from  a  gallery  above  announces  to  them  the  glad 
tidings  of  the  birth  of  Christ,  the  Savior  of  men. 
Then,  while  other  choristers  scattered  throughout 
the  galleries  sing,  "  Glory  to  God  in  the  highest, 
and  on  earth  peace,  good  will  to  men,"  the  Shep- 
herds advance  to  the  choir,  and  halt  at  length  before 
a  manger  which  has  been  arranged  near  the  altar 
and  by  the  side  of  an  image  of  the  Virgin  Mary. 
There  two  other  priests,  personating  Women 
who  had  aided  the  Virgin-mother,  ask  the  Shep- 
herds what  it  is  they  are  seeking,  and  then  display 
the  infant  Jesus  to  them.  The  Shepherds,  after 
adoring  the  new-born  babe  and  its  mother,  de- 
part singing  **  For  unto  us  a  child  is  born,"— 
which  is  the  beginning  of  the  high  mass  regularly 
celebrated  at  Christmas. 

More  elaborate  is  a  liturgical  embellishment 
dealing  with  the  Three  Kings,  the  Three  Wise 
Men  of  the  East,  and  calling  for  a  greater  variety 
of  characters  and  for  a  more  obvious  effort  to  in- 
dicate the  different  localities  where  the  several 
portions  of  the  gospel-story  were  supposed  to  take 
place.  The  huge  churches,  which  had  begun  to 
spring  up  all  over  Europe  in  the  century  follow- 
ing the  fateful  year  looo,  were  not  encumbered 
with  pews,  as  are  our  smaller  modern  edifices; 
and  their  free  floor-space  would  contain  multi- 
ii6 


THE  MEDIEVAL  DRAMA 

tudes  of  Spectators,  even  tho  lanes  were  kept  open 
through  the  throng  to  connect  the  altar  and  the 
various  doors.  Within  the  chancel  was  the 
manger,  with  an  image  of  the  Virgin-mother; 
and  also  two  priests  stood  there,  personating 
Women  who  had  been  assisting  Mary.  In  a 
pulpit,  or  in  a  gallery,  was  the  chorister  who  was 
to  sing  the  message  of  the  Angel.  On  a  platform 
not  far  distant  was  a  throne,  on  which  Herod  sat, 
surrounded  by  the  members  of  his  court,  all  of 
these  characters  being  assumed  by  officials  of  the 
church.  The  Angel,  the  two  Women  by  the 
manger,  and  Herod  and  his  courtiers,  were  each 
in  their  several  stations  in  the  church  before  the 
play  began;  and  they  were  supposed  not  to  be 
able  to  see  one  another,— indeed,  they  were  sup- 
posed not  even  to  be  present  until  it  should  be 
the  turn  of  each  to  enter  into  the  action. 

First  the  Shepherds  come  into  the  church  by 
one  of  the  doors ;  and,  passing  through  the  ranks 
of  the  congregation,  they  advance  toward  the 
choir,  where  the  Angel  hails  them  wjth  the  glad 
tidings,  whereupon  they  go  to  the  manger  and 
adore  the  holy  babe ;  and  at  last,  after  singing,  they 
stand  apart.  Then  through  another  door  on  the 
eastern  side  of  the  church  enter  the  Three  Kings; 
and  when  they  have  come  to  the  middle  of  the 
edifice  a  star  begins  to  guide  them  to  the  manger, 
—this  star  being  a  light  pulled  along  a  wire. 
117 


THE    MEDIEVAL   DRAMA 

Herod,  silent  on  his  throne  all  this  time,  has  been 
supposed  not  to  see  the  Shepherds ;  but  the  Kings 
he  does  see,  and  so  he  sends  a  Messenger  to  ask 
who  they  are.  The  Messenger  questions  them 
at  length,  and  finally  bears  back  to  Herod  the 
dread  news  that  the  King  of  Kings  has  been  born, 
and  that  the  Three  Wise  Men  of  the  East  are 
being  guided  to  his  cradle  by  the  star  above  their 
heads.  Herod  then  consults  the  Scribes,  who 
proceed  to  search  the  Scriptures  and  to  inform 
him  that  the  promised  Redeemer  should  be  born  in 
Bethlehem.  Herod  rages  violently  at  these  ill  tid- 
ings, and  knocks  the  books  from  the  hands  of 
the  Scribes ;  but,  pacified  by  his  son,  he  bids  the 
Three  Wise  Men  follow  the  star  and  find  the  new- 
born King,  commanding  them  on  their  return  to 
let  him  know  where  the  royal  infant  lay.  Herod 
and  all  his  courtiers  then  become  silent  again,  and 
cease  to  take  part  in  the  play  until  they  shall  be 
once  more  needed.  The  Three  Kings,  bearing 
their  gifts  and  led  by  the  star,  advance  toward 
the  altar  and  meet  the  Shepherds,  who  now  come 
into  the  action  again.  The  Shepherds  sing  a  hymn 
of  praise;  and  the  Three  Kings  ask  them  what 
they  have  seen.  The  Shepherds,  after  declaring 
that  they  have  beheld  the  holy  child  lying  in  a 
manger,  withdraw;  and  the  Three  Kings  follow 
the  star  to  the  altar,  where  the  two  Women  ask 
them  who  they  are  and  what  they  are  seeking. 

u8 


THE  MEDIEVAL   DRAMA 

The  Three  Wise  Men  reveal  the  object  of  their 
journeying;  and  the  babe  is  then  displayed  to 
them.  They  adore  it,  presenting  their  gifts  of 
gold  and  frankincense  and  myrrh.  The  Angel  in 
the  pulpit  or  gallery  above  them  breaks  in,  de- 
claring that  the  prophecies  are  fulfilled,  and  bid- 
ding the  Three  Kings  go  home  by  another  way. 
Thereupon  the  Wise  Men,  chanting  a  hymn  of 
praise,  pass  through  the  assembled  multitude  and 
leave  the  church  by  a  western  door.  Herod  is 
supposed  not  to  see  them  take  their  leave,  but 
just  as  soon  as  they  are  gone,  the  Messenger  in- 
forms the  monarch  that  they  have  departed  in  dis- 
obedience; thereupon  Herod  draws  his  sword 
and  gives  it  to  a  Soldier,  bidding  him  go  forth 
and  slay  all  the  children. 

Here  the  play  seems  to  end,  altho,  as  we  have 
also  the  manuscript  of  a  representation  of  the 
Flight  into  Egypt  and  of  the  Slaughter  of  the  In- 
nocents, it  is  probable  that,  in  some  churches,  on 
some  occasions,  all  the  various  incidents  con- 
nected with  the  Nativity  were  set  forth  in  action, 
one  after  the  other.  What  it  is  most  important 
for  us  to  seize  and  to  fix  in  our  memories  is  that 
these  episodes  of  the  gospel-story— the  Scene  of 
the  Shepherds,  the  Adoration  of  the  Wise  Men, 
the  Wrath  of  Herod,  the  Slaughter  of  the  Inno- 
cents—came into  existence  each  by  itself,  having 
been  put  into  dramatic  form  as  a  more  vivid  and 
119 


THE   MEDIEVAL   DRAMA 

impressive  illustration  of  the  liturgy;  and  that 
possibly  a  long  while  elapsed  before  any  one 
thought  to  combine  these  scattered  scenes  into  a 
sequence.  But  after  the  Christmas  cycle  of  the 
Nativity  had  knit  itself  together,  following  or 
preceding  a  similar  Easter  cycle  of  the  separate 
scenes  of  the  Crucifixion  and  the  Resurrection,  it 
was  probably  not  very  long  before  an  attempt 
was  made  to  link  the  two  cycles  together,  fill- 
ing out  the  gaps  by  dramatizing  the  more  inter- 
esting of  the  intervening  episodes  of  the  gospel- 
story,— the  Raising  of  Lazarus,  for  instance,  and 
the  Driving  of  the  Money-changers  from  the 
Temple.  Thus  the  whole  story  of  the  life  and 
death  and  resurrection  of  Jesus  could  be  presented 
in  dialog  in  the  church  by  the  priests  themselves, 
in  Latin,  and  as  part  of  the  service,  for  the  en- 
lightenment of  the  ignorant  population  in  those 
dark  ages. 

Altho  the  priests  who  put  it  together  had  not 
given  a  thought  to  this  aspect  of  it,  the  story  of 
Jesus  is  truly  dramatic,  not  only  in  its  humanity, 
in  its  color,  in  its  variety,  in  its  infinite  pathos, 
but  also  and  chiefly  in  its  full  possession  of  the 
prime  essential  of  a  true  drama— in  its  having  at 
rthe  heart  of  it  a  struggle,  an  exhibition  of  de- 
!  termination,  a  clash  of  contending  desires.     In- 
deed, it  is  the  most  dramatic  of  all  struggles,  for 
it  is  the  perpetual  conflict  of  good  and  evil.     To 
20 


THE   MEDIEVAL   DRAMA 

US  moderns  the  issue  is  sharply  joined ;  but  in  the 
medieval  church  it  was  even  more  obvious,  since 
in  the  middle  ages  no  one  ever  doubted  that  a 
personal  Devil  was  forever  striving  to  thwart 
the  will  of  a  personal  God.  In  the  passion-play, 
which  showed  in  action  all  the  leading  events  of 
the  life  of  Christ,  both  of  the  contestants  were 
set  boldly  before  the  spectators— God  himself 
high  in  Heaven,  and  the  Devil  escaping  from 
Hell-mouth  to  work  his  evil  will  among  mankind. 
After  all  these  little  scenes,  each  of  them  de- 
vised originally  for  the  special  day  of  the  church 
calendar  when  the  event  was  commemorated,  had 
been  combined  into  a  New  Testament  cycle,  and 
after  there  had  been  prefixed  to  it  certain  epi- 
sodes dramatized  from  the  Old  Testament  also, 
and  selected  because  they  seemed  to  prefigure  the 
gospel-story,— after  the  passion-play  had  become 
a  mystery,  and  after  it  was  thus  grown  to  its  full 
length  and  swollen  huge,  it  was  found  to  be  too 
unwieldy  for  presentation  in  the  church  Mtself, 
and  too  burdensome  for  the  clergy  tO/  perfornu^ 
Thrust  out  of  the  church,  it  may  have  lingerea 
for  a  while  in  the  churchyard  or  in  the  cloisters 
or  in  the  great  square  before  the  sacred  edifice,,^^ 
As  the  successive  episodes  of  the  gospel-story 
no  longer  had  an  intimate  connection  with  the 
actual  liturgy,  the  tendency  was  increased  to  sub- 
stitute for  the  Latin  of  the  priests  the  language  of 

121 


THE   MEDIEVAL    DRAMA 

the  people;  and  this  pressure  became  irresistible 
when  the  ecclesiastics  gave  up  to  laymen  the 
acting  of  the  several  characters. 

The  performance  of  a  full-grown  mystery,  with 
due  regard  to  the  dignity  of  the  theme,  was  an 
undertaking  of  not  a  little  magnitude,  requiring 
both  capital  and  executive  ability.  The  prepara- 
tion of  the  text,  the  adjusting  of  the  music,  the 
making  ready  of  the  costumes,  the  training  of  the 
actors,— these  things  were  possible  only  to  an 
organization  of  a  certain  stability.  At  first  the 
church  was  the  only  body  having  at  once  the 
desire  and  the  resources  to  execute  so  onerous  a 
task.  /But  when  the  gilds  arose  in  time,  and 
when  burghers  banded  together  and  craftsmen 
combined,  it  became  possible  for  the  church  to 
relinquish  the  control  of  the  mysteries  to  lay  or- 
ganizations. \ 

III 

But  altho  the  evolution  of  the  passion-play  from 
the  liturgy  is  obvious,  we  find  in  the  mystery, 
wlien  it  was  presented  in  the  language  of  the  peo- 
ple by  the  craftsmen  and  the  burghers,  one  element 
which  is  not  of  ecclesiastical  origin ;  —we  find  the 
element  of  humor,  of  joyous  gaiety,  of  vivacious 
realism,  and  often  indeed  of  reckless  vulgarity. 
Even  before  it  was  wholly  independent  of  the 
church  the  new  drama  had  felt  the  influence  of 


THE   MEDIEVAL   DRAMA 

popular  taste,  and  it  had  taken  over  more  than 
one  of  the  accepted  devices  of  the  prim'itive 
comic  plays,  such  as  the  strolling  buffoons  were, 
wont  to  perform.  The  brief  farces  of  these  wan- 
dering minstrels  may  have  been  mere  dramatized 
anecdotes,  practical  jokes  in  dialog,  pantomimic 
horse-play  of  an  elementary  type;  they  were 
wholly  unliterary,  and  being  often  even  unwrit- 
ten, they  have  rarely  been  preserved.  Yet  it  is 
perfectly  possible  that  this  medieval  farce,  with 
its  hearty  fun  and  its  frankness  of  speech,  is  the 
direct  descendant  of  the  rude  humor  of  the  Latin 
rustics,  surviving  unobserved  and  neglected 
through  all  the  centuries  of  the  dark  ages,  and 
serving  humbly  to  satisfy,  in  some  measure,  the 
perpetual  human  desire  for  a  story  told  in  action^ 
When  at  last  the  serious  play  had  been  developed 
out  of  the  services  of  the  church,  this  folk-drama 
was  ready  to  supply  the  comic  element,  without 
which  any  representation  of  life  must  needs  be 
one-sided.  *^ 

Fortunately  chance  has  saved  for  our  enlighten- 
ment not  a  few  of  the  later  specimens  of  this 
folk-play;  and  we  can  see  that  it  was  generally 
as  unliterary  and  as  inartistic  as  one  might  expect, 
and  that  it  assumed  a  great  variety  of  forms.  It 
might  be  merely  a  burlesque-sermon  satirizing  the 
clergy  or  the  civil  authorities;  it  might  be  a  mon- 
olog  in  which,  for  example,  a  boastful  character 
123 


THE   MEDIEVAL   DRAMA 

unwillingly  admitted  his  own  unworthiness;  it 
might  be  little  more  than  a  comic  song  with  a 
telling  refrain  and  with  illustrative  gestures;  it 
might  be  a  dialog  of  cut-and-thrust  repartee  not 
unlike  the  pungent  talk  interchanged  by  the  ring- 
master and  the  clown  in  the  modern  circus;  it 
might  even  be  a  lively  little  play  with  a  simple 
ingenuity  of  situation,  presenting  a  scene  of 
every-day  life  with  an  abundance  of  pertinent 
detail. 

Such,  for  example,  is  the  French  farce  of  the 
'Tub,'  with  its  three  characters  of  the  Husband, 
the  Wife,  and  the  Mother-in-law.  The  Husband 
is  henpecked ;  and  the  Wife,  aided  by  the  Mother- 
in-law,  has  even  gone  so  far  as  to  draw  up  an 
agreement  for  the  Husband  to  sign,  in  which  he 
has  bound  himself  to  do  all  the  work  of  the 
household,  and  in  which  his  several  duties  are 
specified,  item  by  item.  Then,  as  it  happens, 
the  Wife  falls  into  the  tub  in  which  they  have 
been  washing  the  household  linen,  and  she  cries 
to  the  Husband  to  help  her  out.  He  consults  the 
agreement,  and  then  refuses  to  assist  her,  as  that 
is  not  set  down  in  writing.  The  Wife  insists; 
and  the  Husband  protests  that  he  is  willing  to  do 
all  that  he  has  agreed  to  do,  but  nothing  more. 
The  Mother-in-law  intervenes,  but  she  cannot  ex- 
tricate the  Wife  without  the  Husband's  help;  and 
he  refers  her  again  to  the  document.     He  is  ready 


THE   MEDIEVAL   DRAMA 

to  bake  and  to  boil  and  to  get  up  early  to  make 
the  fire,  as  he  has  promised  to  do ;  but  as  for  pull- 
ing the  Wife  out  of  the  tub,  that  is  not  his  duty, 
since  it  is  not  down  in  the  bond.  The  Wife  and 
the  Mother-in-law  scold  and  threaten  at  first;  but 
at  last  they  appeal.  The  Husband  suggests  that 
if  he  is  to  do  more  than  he  has  bound  himself  to 
do  in  writing,  then  the  agreement  is  really  use- 
less, and  he  proposes  that  it  shall  be  torn  up  be- 
fore he  rescues  the  Wife.  As  her  danger  is  now 
pressing,  the  two  women  agree  to  this ;  the  bond 
is  rent  in  twain,  and  the  Husband  extricates  the 
Wife  from  the  tub.  The  household  is  once  more 
upon  a  peace  footing;  and  yet  the  Husband, 
warned  by  experience,  remarks  to  the  spectators 
that  he  wonders  how  long  it  will  last. 

This  little  farce  of  the  *  Tub '  is  French ;  but 
it  has  its  analogs  in  the  other  modern  literatures. 
It  has  a  certain  likeness  to  the  dispute  between 
Noah  and  his  Wife  in  an  English  mystery— a  very 
amusing  scene,  indeed,  in  which  the  spouse  of 
the  patriarch  refuses  to  enter  the  ark  unless  she 
can  bring  her  friends  with  her,  and  in  which, 
when  she  is  taken  on  board  by  force,  she  gives 
her  venerable  husband  a  sound  box  on  the  ear. 

French,  also,    is   the   farce   of  'Master  Peter 
Patelin,'  by  far  the  most  artistic  of  all  the  medie- 
val comic  plays.     Patelin  is  a  swindling  lawyer 
who  is  in  the  depths  of  poverty.     He  goes  to  a 
125 


THE   MEDIEVAL    DRAMA 

Draper  and  wheedles  him  out  of  six  yards  of 

woolen  cloth ;  and  when  the  Draper  comes  to  him 
for  payment,  Patelin  is  in  bed,  and  his  Wife  pro- 
tests that  he  has  not  been  out  of  the  house  for 
weeks.  The  Draper  is  almost  persuaded  that  he 
is  the  victim  of  hallucination,  and  he  returns  to 
his  shop  to  see  if  he  has  truly  lost  the  cloth. 
Finding  that  it  is  really  gone,  he  rushes  again  to 
Patelin's  lodging,  whereupon  the  lawyer  pretends 
to  be  mad,  and  overwhelms  the  unfortunate 
tradesman  with  a  flood  of  words,  first  in  one  of 
the  French  dialects,  and  then  in  those  of  another, 
until  at  last  the  Draper  withdraws,  half  believing 
that  it  is  the  devil  who  has  played  a  trick  on  him. 
Then  there  comes  to  Patelin  the  Shepherd  of  the 
Draper,  whom  his  master  is  suing  for  having 
stolen  some  sheep,  and  the  Shepherd  engages  the 
lawyer  to  defend  him.  Patelin  bids  the  Shep- 
herd to  pretend  to  be  foolish  and  no  matter  what 
question  the  Judge  may  put  to  him,  to  answer 
only  with  the  bleat  of  a  lamb, — "  Baa-a ! "  When 
the  trial  comes  up  before  the  Judge,  Patelin  hides 
himself  behind  the  Shepherd  so  that  the  Draper 
shall  not  see  him.  But  the  shopkeeper  does 
catch  sight  of  the  lawyer  at  last,  and  he  instantly 
demands  payment  for  his  cloth,  to  the  complete 
astonishment  of  the  Judge,  who  had  supposed 
that  he  was  trying  the  Shepherd  for  sheep-steal- 
ing. The  Draper  gets  confused  also,  and  accuses 
126 


THE   MEDIEVAL   DRAMA 

the  Shepherd  of  stealing  the  cloth  and  the  lawyer 
of  taking  the  sheep.  The  puzzled  Judge  ques- 
tions the  Shepherd,  who  answers  no  word  but 
"  Baa-a!"  and  Patelin  adroitly  pleads  that  the  poor 
fellow  is  plainly  an  idiot.  The  Draper  continues 
to  insist  on  payment  for  his  cloth,  altho  the  Judge 
in  vain  begs  him  to  come  back  to  his  sheep.  In 
the  end,  the  magistrate  has  to  acquit  the  Shepherd 
for  lack  of  evidence  against  him.  Then  the 
wretched  Draper  asks  Patelin  if  he  is  not  the 
lawyer  who  had  been  seen  in  bed  only  a  few 
minutes  before;  and  Patelin  daringly  bids  him  go 
to  the  house  and  look  for  himself.  When  the  tor- 
tured tradesman  has  departed,  Patelin  turns  to 
the  Shepherd  and  demands  his  fee  for  getting  the 
man  off  from  the  charge  against  him.  And  now 
are  the  tables  turned:  the  biter  is  bit,  and  the 
swindler  is  swindled ;  for  the  Shepherd  simply 
answers,  "Baa-a!"  The  play  comes  to  an  end 
swiftly  with  the  discomfited  Patelin  trying  vainly 
to  catch  his  deceitful  client. 

'  Master  Peter  Patelin '  is  a  French  farce,  to  be 
acted  by  itself  whenever  a  company  of  strollers 
happened  to  have  five  performers ;  but  it  is  curi- 
ously like  one  of  the  Nativity  scenes  in  an  English 
mystery.  When  the  Shepherds  are  watching 
their  flocks  by  night,  a  neighbor  joins  them — one 
Mak,  a  man  of  evil  repute.  To  keep  him  under 
guard  when  they  go  to  sleep,  the  Shepherds 
127 


THE   MEDIEVAL   DRAMA 

make  Mak  lie  down  between  them.  But  the 
precaution  is  unavailing,  as  Mak  gets  up,  and 
steals  a  lamb,  and  takes  it  to  his  Wife,  and  then 
returns  to  his  place.  When  the  Shepherds  wake, 
there  is  Mak  between  them ;  but  a  lamb  is  miss- 
ing. Mak  is  suspected  at  once,  and  the  Shep- 
herds go  to  his  house,  where  Mak's  Wife  has  the 
lamb  swaddled  in  a  cradle  like  a  babe.  The 
Shepherds  search  everywhere  and  find  nothing, 
until  one  of  them  goes  to  the  cradle  and  remarks 
that  the  babe  has  a  long  snout.  When  the  lamb 
is  discovered,  Mak's  Wife  promptly  pretends  that 
it  is  a  changeling  just  left  by  an  elf.  The  Shep- 
herds, after  punishing  Mak  by  tossing  him  in  a 
blanket,  return  to  their  flock;  and  almost  imme- 
diately the  Angel  above  sings  to  them  the  glad 
tidings  of  Christmas  morn.  Here  is  a  comic 
action,  complete  in  itself  and  quite  detachable 
from  the  mystery,  with  which,  indeed,  it  has  no 
necessary  connection.  Perhaps  it  is  even  older 
than  the  mystery,  and  was  inserted  into  the  text 
merely  to  supply  what  is  known  nowadays  as 
"comic  relief,"— just  as  the  farce  of  the  'Tub' 
might  have  been  incorporated  into  a  passion-play 
without  any  protest  from  the  public. 

Both  in  French  and  in  English  the  comic  scenes 

of  the  mysteries  were  often  wholly  irrelevant  in 

theme  and  absolutely  incongruous  in  treatment. 

No  reverence  for  the  sacred  subject  prevented  the 

128 


THE   MEDIEVAL   DRAMA 

medieval  audience  from  enjoying  a  joke,  or  made 
it  very  particular  as  to  the  quality  of  the  fun  it 
laughed  at.  Just  as  we  moderns  are  surprised  by 
the  grinning  gargoyles  and  by  the  satiric  carv- 
ings of  the  mighty  cathedrals,  so  in  the  medieval 
drama  we  are  often  taken  aback  by  the  bold  vul- 
garity of  the  comic  scenes.  Altho  the  medieval 
writers  had  not  found  out  that  brevity  is  the  sou! 
of  wit,  they  often  acted  on  the  belief  that  breadth, 
is  the  body  of  humor.  The  authors  were  plain  i 
of  speech  and  the  audiences  were  never  squea^^ 
mish ;  and  as  we  study  what  was  then  to  be  seen 
on  the  stage  we  are  reminded  of  Taine's  remark 
that  in  the  middle  ages  man  lived  on  a  dunghill. 
It  must  be  noted  that  the  farces  are  rather  more 
reprehensible  than  the  comic  scenes  of  the  mys- 
teries ;  and  yet  the  grossest  of  these  farces  might 
be  perf^rftfed  sometimes  as  the  prelude  to  a  mira- 
cle-play;  thus  the  *  Miller '  preceded  a  very  devout 
dramatization  of  the  legend  of  Saint  Martin. 
This  low  humor  is  indecorous  rather  than  de- 
moralizing ;  it  shocks  our  sense  of.propriety  some- 
times, but  it  is  never  insidious  or  seductive.  It 
was  intended  for  the  entertainment  of  the  popu- 
lace, which  is  often  vulgar  but  which  is  rarely 
vicious.  In  the  farces,  as  in  the  more  serioils 
scenes  of  the  passion-plays,  we  can  always  see  the 
simplicity  and  the^sincerity  which  were  ever  the  - 
two  chief  characteristics  of  medieval  endeavor* 
129 


~c 


^ 


THE   MEDIEVAL   DRAMA 


IV 


The  change  from  the  Latin  language  to  the 
speech  of  the  people,  the  transfer  of  control  from 
the  clergy  to  the  laity,  the  removal  from  the  in- 
side of  the  church  to  the  outside,  were  all  made 
gradually  and  tentatively,  and  with  no  intent  to 
bring  about  any  radical  transformation.  When 
the  laymen  took  charge,  they  desired  to  do  just 
what  the  priests  had  done,  no  more  and  no  less; 
and  if  we  seek  to  understand  the  circumstances 
of  the  performance  outside  of  the  church,  we 
must  recall  what  the  conditions  were  originally 
inside  the  sacred  edifice.  In  the  cycle  of  the 
Nativity  we  saw  that  the  manger  was  set  up  near 
the  altar,  and  that  not  far  distant  there  was  erected 
a  throne  for  Herod.  Each  of  these  places  was 
thus  what  came  to  be  known  as  a  "  statioji  " ;  and 
the  action  of  the  play  went  on,  not  only  at  the 
one  or  the  other  of  the  stations,  but  also  in  other 
parts  of  the  church,  extending  now  and  again 
even  to  the  doors.  The  Easter  cycle  would  also 
require  several  stations,  —three  at  least,  one  with 
a  throne  for  Pilate,  another  with  the  cross,  a 
third  with  the  open  grave.  The  acting  of  the 
play  was  carried  on  chiefly  in  the  open  space  be- 
tween and  in  front  of  the  several  stations,  the 
characters  belonging  to  each  of  these  remaining 
there,  silent  and  motionless,  until  the  time  came 
130 


THE   MEDIEVAL   DRAMA 

for  them  to  enter  with  the  story.  Then  they  might 
leave  the  station  for  a  while,  and  go  out  into  the 
open  space,  only  to  return  to  their  own  places  so 
soon  as  the  progress  of  the  plot  called  for  the 
characters  of  some  other  station. 

When  the  Christmas  cycle  and  the  Easter  cycle 
were  combined  together,  and  when  the  few  in- 
termediate scenes  were  also  cast  into  dialog,  so 
that  the  whole  earthly  life  of  Jesus  might  be 
shown,  from  his  birth  to  his  resurrection,  then 
the  nave  of  the  church  would  be  inconveniently 
crowded  with  the  many  stations  requisite  for  the 
whole  gospel-story ;  and  there  would  be  left  be- 
tween them,  and  in  front,  an  inadequate  area  for 
what  might  be  termed  the  neutral  ground,  the 
open  space  for  the  acting  of  the  many  scenes 
which  did  not  call  for  special  stations— such,  for 
instance,  as  the  Entry  into  Jerusalem,  or  the  Be- 
trayal at  Gethsemane.  Those  who  began  to  act 
out  the  sacred  story  in  the  church  had  no  thought 
of  scenery,— which,  indeed,  was  a  thing  to  them 
not  only  unknown,  but  wholly  inconceivable. 
They  were  seeking  to  show  what  had  happened 
on[the  very  day  they  were  commemorating.  Even 
when  the  incidents  had  cohered  into  a  sequence, 
it  was  the  j^ion  itself  that  was  all-important, 
and  the  glacewhere  it  came  to  pass  was  without 
significance  except  when  it  needed  to  be  specified. 
So  the  most  of  the  acting  was  always  in  the  more 
»3i 


THE   MEDIEVAL   DRAMA 

open  space  in  the  center;  and  stations  were  uti- 
lized only  when  they  were  really  necessary. 
Probably  as  the  mysteries  increased  in  length 
the  number  of  necessary  stations  became  cumber- 
some, and  only  in  the  larger  cathedrals  would  it 
be  possible  to  avoid  an  awkward  cluttering  within 
the  chancel.  Quite  possibly,  this  multiplication 
was  an  added  reason  for  removing  the  perform- 
ance of  the  mysteries  outside  the  church,  to  some 
ampler  place,  where  the  several  stations  might  be 
more  widely  separated, 
y'  When  this  removal  did  take  place,  and  the 
mysteries  were  presented  in  the  open  air,  what 
the  laymen  who  took  charge  of  them  would  un- 
doubtedly seek  to  do  would  be  to  preserve  care- 
fully such  traditions  as  had  been  established  in 
the  course  of  the  performances  given  by  the 
clergy.  These  laymen  would  therefore  avail 
themselves  of  the  device  of  the  stations,  modi- 
fying these  as  might  be  required  by  the  new 
conditions  of  the  performance.  In  England  this 
modification  came  in  time  to  be  somewhat  differ- 
ent from  that  obtaining  in  France;  but  as  the 
English  mystery  is  derived  from  French  models, 
the  French  form  demands  attention  first,  the  more 
so  as  elsewhere  in  Europe  there  is  a  closer  resem- 
blance to  French  usage  than  to  English. 
/  In  France,  then,  a  mystery  would  be  acted 
/upon  a  platform  put  up  in  some  public  place, 
132 


THE   MEDIEVAL   DRAMA 

often  in  the  open  square  in  front  of  the  cathedral. 
To  provide  reserved  seats  for  the  dignitaries  of 
the  church,  the  officials  of  the  city,  and  the  dis- 
tinguished strangers  invited  to  attend,  grand 
stands  w^ould  be  erected  facing  the  platform  and 
along  the  sides,  the  central  area  being  left  free 
for  the  populace,  who  were  always  eiger  to 
crowd  in,  while  the  gaily  draped  windows  of  the 
surrounding  houses  would  be  available  as  private 
boxes.  The  platform,  intended  to  serve  as  a 
stage,  was  perhaps  a  hi^ndred  and  fifty  feet  long, 
and  some  fifty  or  sixty  feet  deep.  The  front  part 
was  generally  free  and  clear,  so  that  the  actors 
could  move  to  and  fro,  while  at  the  back  were 
ranged  the  stations— which  in  France  came  soon 
to  be  known  as  ''mansions."  At  the  extreme 
left  of  the  spectators,  and  raised  high  on  pillars, 
was  Heaven,  wherein  God  sat,  often  with  a^ 
gilded  face,  the  b'etterTo^uggest  the  shining  glon 
of  his  countenance.  At  the  extreme  right  of  th( 
spectators  was  Hell-mouth,  the  fiery  cavern  where 
the  Devil  and  all  his  imps  had  their  abode.  Then 
stretching  from  Heaven  to  Hell-mouth  was  the 
line  of  mansions,  those  earliest  in  use  being  on 
the  left.  A  wall,  pierced  by  a  door,  might  in- 
dicate Nazareth ;  next  an  altar  covered  by  a  canopy 
and  protected  by  a  balustrade  would  suggest  the 
Temple;  and  a  second  wall  with  its  gate  could 
serve  to  call  up  the  idea  of  Jerusalem  itself.  In 
133 


THE   MEDIEVAL   DRAMA 

the  center  there  might  be  a  more  elaborate  con- 
struction, with  columns  and  a  throne,  intended 
for  the  palace  of  Pontius  Pilate.  A  third  wall  with 
two  doors  might  be  made  to  serve  as  the  house 
of  the  high-priest  and  as  the  Golden  Gate;  while 
in  front  of  this  and  not  far  from  Hell-mouth  there 
mightbe  a  tank  of  real  water,  with  a  little  boat  float- 
ing on  it,  so  as  to  simulate  the  Sea  of  Gennesaret. 
These  are  the  mansions  that  are  depicted  in  a 
miniature  on  the  manuscript  of  a  mystery  acted 
in  Valenciennes  in  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth 
century.  In  other  places,  and  at  other  times, 
there  might  be  more  or  there  might  be  less,  for 
there  was  never  any  uniformity  of  custom;  and 
even  here  we  see  that  many  of  the  most  impor- 
tant episodes  of  the  gospel-narrative  must  have 
been  performed  on  the  front  part  of  the  platform 
and  wholly  unrelated  to  any  of  the  mansions 
ranged  at  the  back.  The  mansions  were  employed 
only  when  certain  portions  of  the  sacred  story 
could,  by  their  use,  be  made  clearer  or  more 
striking;  and  even  when  they  were  set  up,  how- 
ever elaborate  their  decoration  might  be,  it  was 
never  in  any  way  deceptive.  The  mansions  were 
not  intended  actually  to  represent  the  special 
places ;  the  most  they  were  expected  to  do  was  to 
suggest  them  so  that  a  few  columns  would  indi- 
cate a  palace  or  a  temple,  and  so  that  a  wall  and  a 
door  sufficed  to  evoke  the  idea  of  a  city. 
»34 


THE   MEDIEVAL   DRAMA 

Thus  we  see  that  in  France  the  stations  used 
inside  the  church  were  set  up  side  by  side  on  the 
open-air  stage  outside  of  the  church,  where  they 
were  known  as  mansions.  In  England,  when 
the  passion-play  was  taken  out  of  the  sacred  edi- 
fice, another  arrangement  was  adopted:  the  sta- 
tions were  separated  and  each  was  shown  by 
itself,  being  called  a  "  pageant."  Sometimes 
these  were  immovable,  and  sometimes  they  were 
ambulatory;  and  in  the  latter  case,  which  seems 
to  have  been  the  more  frequent,  the  pageant  was 
apparently  not  unlike  the  elaborately  decorated 
*'  floats  "  familiar  in  modern  parades,  such  as  that 
of  Mardi  Gras  in  New  Orleans.  Corpus  Christi 
day  was  early  chosen  as  the  festival  most  fit  for 
the  performance  of  the  mysteries ;  and  in  Great 
Britain  the  pageants  followed  in  the  wake  of  the 
Corpus  Christi  procession  through  the  town. 
The  first  pageant,  with  its  appropriate  decorations 
and  its  own  group  of  performers,  would  draw  up 
before  the  church-door  as  the  end  of  the  proces- 
sion emerged  therefrom ;  and  the  first  episode  of 
the  play  would  then  be  represented  there,  some- 
times on  the  broad  platform  of  the  wagon,  but 
often  in  the  street  itself,— just  as  most  of  the 
acting  in  the  French  mysteries  took  place  not  so 
much  in  the  mansions  themselves  as  in  the  neutral 
ground  in  the  front  of  the  stage.  One  stage- 
direction  in  an  English  manuscript  is  curiously 
135 


THE   MEDIEVAL   DRAMA 

significant:  "Here  Herod  shall  rage  on  the  pa- 
geant and  in  the  street." 

When  the  first  episode  had  been  played  out, 
the  second  pageant  appeared;  and  the  first  pa- 
geant was  dragged  away  along  the  line  of  march 
of  the  Corpus  Christi  procession  to  another  ap- 
pointed spot,  where  the  first  episode  was  acted 
again,  while  the  performers  attached  to  the  sec- 
ond pageant  were  presenting  the  second  episode 
before  the  doors  of  the  church.  Then  a  third  pa- 
geant would  take  the  place  of  the  second;  and 
thus  it  was  that,  in  the  course  of  the  long  sum- 
mer day,  the  spectator,  no  matter  at  which  of 
the  chosen  spots  he  might  chance  to  stand, 
could  see  all  the  successive  incidents  of  the 
mystery  represented  before  him,  partly  on  the 
pageants,  with  their  elementary  attempts  to  indi- 
cate the  actual  place  where  the  action  was  sup- 
posed to  be  passing,  and  partly  in  the  open  street 
in  the  space  that  was  kept  clear  for  the  actors. 
For  certain  of  the  episodes,  such  as  the  Trial  of 
Jesus,  for  example,  two  pageants  were  necessary, 
and  the  performers  passed  from  one  to  the  other 
as  the  incidents  of  the  narrative  might  require. 

This  use  of  ambulatory  pageants  seems  to  h^ve 
obtained  chiefly  in  the  English  towns;  and  in  the 
rural  districts  the  pageants  were  not  decorated 
wagons,  but  platforms  set  up  along  the  route  of 
the  Corpus  Christi  procession.  There  was  a  stage] 
136 


THE   MEDIEVAL   DRAMA 

for  each  of  the  important  episodes  of  the  play, thus 
recalling  the  original  stations  devised  for  the  per- 
formance when  it  took  place  inside  of  the  church. 
The  spectators,  following  the  procession,  would 
halt  in  front  of  the  first  platform  and  witness  the 
acting  of  the  first  episode;  and  when  that  was 
concluded  they  would  pass  along  to  the  second 
platform  to  behold  the  second  episode;  and  so  on 
until  they  had  seen  the  entire  mystery.  The  Eng- 
lish were  thus  setting  up  separately  the  stations 
which  the  French  had  preferred  to  put  side  by 
side  upon  one  very  long  platform.  But  these 
variations  of  custom  between  the  French  and  the 
English  are  external  only,  and  of  no  immediate 
importance,  altho  they  account  in  part  for  the 
divergence  to  be  observed  in  the  development  of 
the  later  dramatic  literatures  of  the  two  languages. 
Essentially  the  mystery  is  the  same,  wherever 
it  is  acted,  and  in  whatever  language,  French  or 
English,  German  or  Italian.  It  is  the  same  in  its  \  f 
long-windedness  and  in  its  loose-jointedness,  in 
its  homely  directness  of  speech  alternating  with  --O^ 
turgid  bombast,  in  its  occasional  touches  of  gen-  *^ 

uine  fefiling  and  of  unstrained  pathos,  in  the  intro- 
duction of  humorous  scenes,  in  the  frank  realism 
of  dialog,  and,  above  all,  in  the  simple  faith  of 
those  who  wrote  it,  of  those  who  acted  it,  and 
of  those  who  beheld  its  performance.  The  in- 
fluence of  the  audience  must  always  be  taken 
137 


THE   MEDIEVAL   DRAMA 

into  account:  and  the  medieval  spectators  for 
whose  edification  the  mystery  was  devised  were 
unlearned  and  without  culture;  they  were  igno- 
rant and  even  gross ;  they  had  no  tincture  of  let- 
ters; they  were  credulous  and  superstitious  and 
wonder-loving;  they  were  at  once  devout  and 
irreverent,— or  at  least  they  seem  so  to  us;  they 
had  a  liking  for  broad  fun  and  for  a  robust  realism 
of  treatment;  they  were  shocked  by  no  vulgarity 
and  they  resented  no  incongruity,  for  they  were 
wholly  devoid  of  the  historic  sense  (as  we  mod- 
erns call  it). 

Altho  the  English  mysteries  were  of  Anglo- 
Norman  origin  and  follow  the  French  tradition  in 
the  main,  yet  the  bond  of  unity  was  broken  when 
Latin  was  abandoned  for  the  vernacular;  and 
there  are  other  differences  between  the  perform- 
ances in  French  and  those  in  English  besides  the 
modification  of  the  station  into  the  mansion  in 
the  one  country  and  into  the  pageant  in  the  other. 
In  England,  the  entire  mystery— shortened  now 
and  again  by  the  occasional  omission  of  one  epi- 
sode or  another— seems  sometimes  to  have  been 
presented  in  a  single  day,  the  exhibition  begin- 
ning as  early  as  four  in  the  morning.  In  France 
the  performance  was  more  likely  to  continue 
over  several  successive  days,  very  much  as  the 
Wagnerian  cycle  is  now  given  at  Bayreuth,— altho 
it  may  be  doubted  whether  any  modern  audience 
138 


THE   MEDIEVAL    DRAMA 

could  have  the  patience  of  the  medieval  specta- 
tors of  Bourges  who  in  the  sixteenth  century 
were  entertained  by  a  mystery  of  the  *  Acts  of 
the  Apostles,'  the  performance  of  which  took 
forty  days. 

In  England,  as  we  have  seen,  the  pageants  fol- 
lowed the  religious  procession ;  whereas  in  France, 
where  the  mansions  were  immovable  on  a  single 
platform,  it  was  not  unusual  for  the  whole  troop 
of  performers  to  make  a  street-parade  before  the 
acting  began,  quite  in  the  manner  of  the  modern 
traveling  circus.  In  France,  again,  when  the 
church  gave  up  the  control  of  the  mysteries,  they 
were  turned  over  to  lay  organizations  of  burghers,  ^ 
founded  especially  to  perform  the  sacred  plays; 
whereas  in  England  this  task  was  assumed  by 
the_^lds,  each  of  which  undertook  the  episode 
which  its  craftsmanship  best  fitted  it  to  carry  out, 
the  Carpenters,  for  instance,  being  responsible 
for  Noah's  Ark,  and  the  Goldsmiths  undertaking 
the  Three  Kings,  because  they  could  best  provide 
the  royal  diadems. 

Further  differences  there  are  also  between  the 
mysteries  as  performed  in  France  or  in  England 
and  the  sacred-representations  of  the  Italians; 
and  again  between  the  dramatizations  of  the 
Scriptures  as  acted  in  Germany  and  those  to  be 
seen  in  Spain.  But  these  differences  are  matters 
of  detail  merely;  and  the  line  of  development  was 
»39 


THE    MEDIEVAL   DRAMA 

everywhere  the  same  throughout  those  parts  of 
Europe  that  had  been  ruled  by  Rome.  Every- 
where also  was  the  production  of  a  mystery 
considered  as  a  good  deed,  as  an  act  pleasing  to 
Heaven,  and  certain  to  win  favor  from  the  Deity 
and  from  the  saints.  Such  performances  were 
often,  therefore,  given  in  a  season  of  pesti- 
lence to  placate  the  wrath  of  God  or  to  deserve 

sjthe  protection  of  some  particular  saint.  Such  an 
exhibition  took  place  in  Constantinople,  within 
Saint  Sophia  itself,  in  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth 
century,  just  before  the  capture  of  the  capital 
of  the  Western  Empire  by  the  Turks.  Mys- 
teries were  also  performed  in  certain  towns  after 
an  escape  from  impending  danger  and  as  a  testi- 
mony of  gratitude  to  Heaven  for  its  intervention; 
and  it  is  to  this  sentiment  that  we  owe  the  con- 
tinued performance  of  the  passion-play^  which  is 
still  to  be  seen  every  tenth  summer  at  Oberam- 

'  mergau. 

The  majority  of  the  mysteries  preserved  to  us 
in  manuscript  are  anonymous,  and  of  only  a 
few  are  we  acquainted  with  the  exact  date 
of  composition.  Most  of  the  authors  are  to  be 
considered  rather  as  compilers;  lacking  indi- 
viduality, they  were  satisfied  to  accept  the  play 
as  they  found  it,  modifying  the  framework  but 
little  after  it  had  once  been  constructed,  and 
satisfying  themselves  with  adding  or  subtracting 
140 


THE   MEDIEVAL    DRAMA 

episodes  at  will.  Each  of  them  freely  availed 
himself  of  the  labors  of  those  of  his  predecessors 
with  which  he  chanced  to  be  familiar.  Some- 
times he  rewrote  what  he  borrowed,  and  some- 
times he  copied  it  slavishly,  careless  of  any  diver- 
sity of  diction.  So  there  is  not  often  harmony 
of  style  in  any  single  mystery ;  and  yet  there  is 
an  immense  monotony  when  a  number  of  them 
are  compared  together. 


Very  closely  allied  to  the  mystery  was  the  mira- 
cle-play, which  may  have  come  into  being  even 
before  the  Easter  cycle  had  elaborated  itself  into 
a  passion-play.  ^  sequence  of  episodes  taken 
from  Holy  Writ  we  now  call  a  mystery  ji  and 
what  we  now  call  a  miracle-play  is  a  sequence  of 
episodes  taken  from  the  life  of  some  wonder- 
working saint.)  In  England  the  mystery  was 
much  the  more  frequent;  but  in  France  the  mira- 
cle-play was  perhaps  the  more  popular,  as  it  was 
probably  almost  as  ancient.  Indeed,  in  the  mid- 
dle ages  no  one  seems  ever  to  have  made  any  dis- 
tinction between  the  two  kinds  of  play,  as  the 
medieval  mind  was  not  trained  to  discriminate 
between  the  canonical  books  and  the  Apocrypha, 
or  even  between  the  Scriptures  and  the  legends 
of  the  saints.  Jn  miracle-play,  as  in  mystery,  we 
141 


THE    MEDIEVAL    DRAMA 

find  the  same  naif  treatment  of  life,  the  same 
panoramic  construction  of  the  story,  the  same 
admixture  of  comic  incidents,  and  the  same  ap- 
parent irreverence;  and  the  circumstances  of  the 
performance  would  be  the  same  also. 

The  middle  ages  had  an  appetite  for  allegory 
quite  as  vigorous  as  the  liking  for  legend;  and 
after  the  saintly  biographies  had  been  set  on  the 
stage  as  miracle-plays,  allegory  was  also  cast  into 
dialog,  and  thus  we  have  the  moral-plays.  The 
r^orality  was  a  medieval  forerunner  of  our  mod- 
ern novel-with-a-purpose,  as  unconvincingly  di- 
dactic as  it  is  inevitably  dull.  The  morality  may 
even  be  defined  as  an  attempt  to  dramatize  a 
sermon,— whereas  the  mystery  is  simply  a  dra- 
matization of  the  text.  Written  to  be  presented 
before  an  audience  used  to  the  primitive  methods 
of  the  passion-play,  the  authors  make  free  use  of 
the  device  of  the  stations,  for  instance.  In  one 
morality,  the  'Castle  of  Constancy,'  there  were 
six  stations :  one  was  a  castellated  structure  open 
below  to  reveal  a  bed  for  the  chief  character,  who 
personified  the  Human  Race;  and  the  other  five 
stations  were  disposed  around  this  loftier  stage, 
one  in  the  east  for  God,  one  in  the  northeast  for 
Greed,  one  in  the  west  for  the  World,  one  in  the 
south  for  the  Flesh,  and  one  in  the  north  for  the 
Devil.  The  hero  of  this  string  of  argumentative 
conversations.  Human  Race,  appears  at  first  as  a 
142 


(, 


\ 


THE   MEDIEVAL   DRAMA 

child,  and  the  Angels  of  Good  and  of  Evil  come  to 
him.  He  is  tempted  off  to  the  World  by  the  Evil 
Angel;  and  later,  as  a  young  man,  he  is  intro- 
duced to  the  Seven  De^adly  Sins.  In  time  Repen- 
tance leads  him  to  Confession;  and  as  a  man  of 
forty  we  see  him  in  the  Castle  of  Constancy,  sur- 
rounded by  the  Seven  Most  Excellent  Virtues. 
Thereupon  the  Castle  itself  is  besieged  by  the 
three  evil  powers  and  the  Seven  Deadly  Sins  and 
their  allies.  Then  at  last,  as  an  old  man,  Human 
Race  backslides  again,  and  the  Evil  Angel  is  bear- 
ing him  away,  when  a  formal  trial  takes  place 
before  God,  at  which  Justice  and  Truth  accuse 
him,  while  he  is  defended  by  Mercy  and  Peace. 

The  morality  was  an  attempt  to  depict  charac-^ 
ter,  but  with  the  aid  of  violent  colors  only,  and 
with  a  harsh  juxtaposition  of  light  and  darkness. 
Yet  it  helped  along  the  development  of  the  drama 
in  that  it  permitted  a  freer  handling  of  the  action, 
since  the  writer  of  moralities  had  always  to  invent 
his  plots,  whereas  the  maker  of  mysteries  had  his 
stories  ready-made  to  his  hand.  The  morality  was 
frankly  fiction,  while  the  miracle-play  gave  itself 
out  for  fact.  Then,  also,  the  tendency  seems 
irresistible  for  an  author  who  has  any  appreciation 
of  human  nature  to  go  speedily  from  the  abstract 
to  the  concrete  and  to  substitute  for  the  cold 
figure  of  Pride  itself  th^  less  frigid  portrait  of  an 
actual  man  who  is  proud.  Thus  mere  allegory, 
«43 


THE    MEDIEVAL    DRAMA 

barren  and  chill,  is  swiftly  warmed  into  social 
satire,  tingling  with  individuality;  and  so  we  have 
here  before  us  the  germ  out  of  which  a  living 
comedy  was  to  be  evolved.  It  is  to  be  noted  that 
when  the  morality  had  achieved  a  certain  freedom 
for  itself  in  plot  and  in  character,  it  seems  to  have 
exerted  a  healthy  influence  upon  the  contempo- 
rary mystery  and  miracle-playt 

In  fact,  the  medieval  mind  did  not  distinguish 
the  three  kinds  of  drama  sharply,  and  we  find 
them  commingled  in  more  than  one  example,— 
notably  in  the  English  'Mary  Magdalene.'  We 
discover  the  same  confusion  of  species  in  all  un- 
critical periods,  when  production  is  spontaneous 
and  unconscious.  In  method  the  mystery  and 
the  miracle-play  are  alike ;  and  by  no  certain  mark 
can  we  set  off  the  morality  from  the  interlude  in 
English  or  the  monolog  from  the  burlesque-ser- 
mon in  French.  The  more  elevated  the  effort, 
the  more  likely  was  an  admixture  of  the  grotesque. 
Immediately  before  or  after  the  loftiest  moments 
of  a  tragic  theme,  the  nimble  devils  would  come 
capering  forth  to  make  the  spectator  shriek  with 
laughter  at  their  buffoonery  as  they  bore  away 
some  evil-doer  to  be  cast  into  Hell-mouth. 

Popular  as  these  plays  were,  it  is  only  in  a 

chance  episode  that  any  one  of  them  is  really 

raised  into  literature.     The  drama  must  be  thel 

most  democratic  of  all  the  arts,  since  its  very  exis->, ' 

144 


THE   MEDIEVAL   DRAMA 

tence  depends  on  the  multitude ;  and  it  is  therefore 
likely  always  to  represent  the  average  intelligence 
of  any  era.  |'  The  long  period  knov^n  as  the  mid- 
dle ages,  whatever  its  literary  unattractiveness, 
brought  about  a  new  birth  of  the  acted  drama. 
It  aroused  in  the  people  the  desire  for  the  plea- 
sures of  the  theater;  and  it  began  to  train  actors 
against  the  time  when  acting  should  once  more 
become  a  profession. 

In  considering  the  deficiencies  of  the  medieval 
drama,  we  must  never  forget  that  the  actors 
were  all  amateurs,— priests  at  first,  and  then 
burghers  and  craftsmen,  students  and  clerks. 
They  might  be  paid  for  their  services,  or  they 
might  choose  to  perform  as  a  labor  of  love ;  but 
acting  was  not  their  calling,  and  their  opportu- 
nities for  improving  themselves  in  the  art  were 
infrequent.  The  accomplished  actor  stimulates 
the  dramatist,  and  the  playwright  is  ever  devel- 
oping the  performer;  each  is  necessary  to  the 
other,  and  in  the  middle  ages  we  find  neither. 
Yet  slowly  the  traditions  of  a  theater  were  get- 
ting themselves  established.  There  was  acting, 
such  as  it  was;  there  were  plays,  such  as  they 
were,  not  so  much  dramas  as  mere  panoramas  of 
successive  episodes;  there  were  audiences,  rude 
and  gross,  no  doubt,  but  composed  of  human 
beings,  after  all,  and  therefore  ever  ready  to  be 
entranced  and  thrilled  by  the  art  of  the  master- 
145 


THE  MEDIEVAL   DRAMA 

craftsman.  But  in  the  medieval  drama  we  seek 
in  vain  for  a  master-craftsman;  he  is  not  to  be 
found  in  France  or  in  England,  in  Spain,  in  Italy, 
or  in  Germany.  The  elements  oi^-a^ital  drama 
were  all  there,  ready  to  ttre-Mnd  of  a  true  dra- 
matist who  might  know  how  to  make  use  of 
them;  they  were  awaiting  the  grasp  of  a  poet- 
playwright  who  might  be  able  to  present  with 
technical  skill  and  with  imaginative  insight  the 
perpetual  struggle  of  good  and  evil,  of  God  and 
the  Devil. 

But  in  all  medieval  literature  there  is  no  born 
playwright;  and  there  is  no  born  poet  who 
wrought  in  dialog  and  action.  The  one  inde- 
structible work  of  art  which  gives  utterance  to 
the  intentions  of  the  middle  ages,  to  the  ideals  of 
that  dark  time,  and  to  its  aspirations,  was  not 
made  to  be  represented  within  the  church  or  out 
of  it,  either  by  priests  or  by  laymen,  even  tho  it 
bore  the  name  of  the  '  Divine  Comedy.' 


^ 


V.     THE  DRAMA  IN  SPAIN 


IN  the  middle  ages  a  simple  sort  of  drama  had 
been  slowly  evolved  out  of  the  liturgy  of  the 
church;  it  had  grown  sturdily  until  in  time  it 
was  strong  enough  to  stand  on  its  own  feet;  it 
took  over  the  primitive  farce  of  the  strolling  jesters 
and  thus  supplied  itself  with  the  comic  contrast 
needful  in  any  adequate  representation  of  life;  it 
spoke  the  language  of  the  people  and  it  embodied 
their  beliefs  and  their  aspirations ;  in  short,  altho 
it  was  as  yet  clumsily  inartistic  and  frankly  un- 
literary,  it  was  at  least  alive ;  and  it  had  won  its 
right  to  survive.  A  single  brief  scene  acted  in 
the  church,  by  the  priests  themselves,  and  in 
Latin,  had  slowly  led  to  the  performance  of  a 
sequence  of  scenes,  in  the  vernacular,  by  laymen, 
outside  of  the  church.  The  mystery,  which  was 
a  sequence  of  scenes  in  the  life  of  Jesus,  had  a  rival 
in  the  miracle-play,  which  was  a  sequence  c  ^  scenes 
in  the  life  of  some  wonder-working  saint.  Dis- 
regarding the  invisible  line  that  divided  the  sacred 
147 


THE  DRAMA   IN  SPAIN 

from  the  profane,  the  medieval  drama  was  in  time 
able  to  take  as  the  central  figure  of  its  straggling 
episodes  a  hero  of  secular  legend  or  of  romantic 
narrative,  or  even  of  actual  fact.  So  the  chronicle- 
play  came  into  being,  and  the  "history,"  such  as 
we  see  it  in  Shakspere;  and  while  the  miracle- 
play  was  intended  to  be  exhibited  gratuitously, 
in  an  open  square,  by  bands  of  amateurs,  upon 
some  special  occasion,  the  later  chnoaickrplay 
was  prepared  to  be  performed  by  professional 
actors,  at  regular  intervals,  in  a  building  set  apart 
for  the  purpose,  before  an  audience  that  had  paid 
its  way  in. 

It  was  at  this  moment  of  the  development  of 
the  medieval  drama  that  the  Renascence  arrived, 
bringing  with  it  the  masterpieces  of  ancient  art. 
Scholars  in  love  with  the  severe  beauty  of  Greek 
tragedy  turned  with  disgust  from  the  formless- 
ness and  the  vulgarity  of  the  popular  performances. 
They  could  not  know  then  that  the  Attic  stage 
had  grown  out  of  beginnings  quite  as  humble, 
and  that  the  medieval  drama  needed  only  to  be 
lifted  into  literature,  just  as  the  crude  Hellenic 
dialog  and  chorus  had  been  elevated  by  the  power 
of  the  poet  who  had  accepted  the  primitive  form, 
filling  it  with  the  might  of  his  genius.  They  did 
not  perceive  that  the  massive  simplicity  of  Soph- 
ocles was  due  partly  to  the  conditions  undei^ 
which  his  tragedies  had  been  performed  in  the 
148 


THE   DRAMA   IN  SPAIN 

Theater  of  Dionysus,  —  conditions  wholly  unlike 
those  obtaining  in  western  Europe  two  thousand 
years  later.  Indeed,  the  scholars  of  the  Rena- 
scence gave  little  thought  to  the  actual  perform- 
ance, devoting  their  attention  chiefly  to  the  merely 
literary  merits  of  the  ancient  dramatic  poets,  and 
accepting  as  the  model  to  be  followed  not  so  much 
Sophocles,  the  marvelous  playwright,  as  the  un- 
actable Seaeca.  They  were  impatient  to  thrust 
on  one  side  the  rude  but  living  drama  of  their 
own  day,  in  order  to  make  room  for  imitations, — 
and  imitations  rather  of  the  clever  Hispano-Ro- 
man  rhetorician  than  of  the  noble  Athenian  drama- 
tist. They  did  not  perceive  the  vigorous  vitality 
of  the  chronicle-play,  which  had  established  itself 
solidly  in  conformity  with  the  actual  conditions 
of  the  medieval  theater;  and  they  could  not  sus- 
pect that  the  plain  people  were  right  in  clinging  to 
the  existing  drama,  shapeless  as  it  was,  and  in  re- 
sisting all  attempts  to  substitute  for  it  a  merely 
literary  exercise. 

The  chronicle-play  was^rtless  enough,  but  it 
was  exactly  suited  to  its  public;  it  had  a  stage 
of  its  own,  and  actors  to  perform  it,  and  audiences 
to  enjoy  it;  and  all  that  it  needed  was  that  the 
poets  should  perceive  its  possibilities,  and  that 
they  should  accept  it  as  it  was,  biding  their  time 
to  cleanse  it  from  its  vulgarities,  to  bestow  on  it 
the  art  it  lacked,  and  to  give  it  the  harmony  and 


THE   DRAMA    IN   SPAIN 

proportion  it  had  neglected.  The  example  of  the 
great  dramatists  of  antiquity  could  not  but  be 
useful  to  the  poets  who  might  attempt  this  puri- 
fication of  the  drama  of  the  middle  ages ;  and  the 
study  not  only  of  Sophocles,  but  even  of  Seneca, 
might  be  serviceable.  And,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
we  find  that  in  the  several  modern  languages  a 
dramatic  literature  has  come  into  existence  only 
when  successive  poets  have  taken  the  popular 
form  as  they  found  it,  and  tried  to  give  it  some- 
thing of  the  unity,  the  propriety,  and  the  dignity 
which  they  had  admired  in  the  classics  of  Greece 
and  Rome. 

This  is  what  happened  in  Spanish,  in  English, 
and  in  French;  and  in  these  languages  the  modern 
drama  is  an  outgrowth  of  the  medieval,  modified 
more  or  less  by  the  acceptance  of  the  classic 
models.  This  influence  of  the  ancients  is  most 
obvious  in  the  French  theater  and  least  evident  in 
the  Spanish,  while  in  the  English  it  is  pervasive 
rather  than  paraded.  In  Italy  the  scholars  were 
opinionated  and  intolerant;  the  poets  scorned  the 
medieval  drama,  both  serious  and  humorous,  sa- 
cred-representations and  comedy-of-masks ;  they 
insisted  on  casting  aside  all  that  the  middle 
ages  had  accomplished  and  on  returning  abso- 
lutely to  antiquity./^  The  Italian  men-of-letters 
did  not  firmly  grasp  the  fact  that  a  living  drama 
is  always  the  result  of  a  long  partnership  between 
150 


THE   DRAMA   IN  SPAIN 

the  audiences  and  the  actors,  and  that  it  is  always 
conditioned  by  the  circumstances  of  its  perform- 
ance, including  the  traditions  of  the  actual  theater. 
\s  a  result  of  this  hostile  attitude  on  the  part  of 
the  leaders  of  the  new  culture,  we  discover  that 
the  Italians  developed  no  dramatic  literature  of 
their  own.  We  perceive  that  their  efforts  resulted 
in  little  more  than  a  few  lifeless  imitations  from 
the  antique,  acted  by  main  strength  now  and 
again,  but  failing  absolutely  to  establish  a  new 
tradition  in  the  theater  itself.  We  observe  also 
that  the  main  body  of  the  Italian  public  had  to 
satisfy  its  desire  for  the  drama  with  the  unliternry 
and  semi-acrobaticxom^dy^ofini^sks. 

Perhaps  it  was  this  dearth  of  a  living  dramatic 
literature  in  their  own  language  which  helped  to 
lead  the  Italian  critics  astray  in  their  ingenious 
deduction  of  a  code  for  the  control  of  dramatic 
poetry.  They  spurned  the  only  plays  they  had 
had  occasion  to  see  actually  performed ;  and  with 
the  intellectual  subtlety  of  their  race  at  that  epoch, 
they  got  together  a  body  of  rules,  not  exactly 
evolved  out  of  their  inner  consciousness,  but  de- 
rived from  their  misinterpretation  of  what  Horace 
and  Aristotle  had  said.  Misguided  by  what  they 
had  misread  in  the  Roman  lyrist  (who  had  also  no 
acted  drama  to  sustain  his  theories)  and  by  what 
they  read  into  the  Greek  philosopher  (who  was 
specifically  analyzing  the  Attic  drama  only,  that 
>5i 


THE    DRAMA    IN   SPAIN 

being  the  sole  theater  he  could  know  anything 
about),  the  Italian  critics  proceeded  to  set  up  the 
standard  of  the  Three  Unities, —  the  Unity  of  Ac^ 
tion,  the  Unity  of  Tinje,  and  the  Unity  of  Play, 
—  insisting  that  a  tragedy  should  have  a  single 
story  to  be  completed  in  a  single  day  and  to  be 
shown  in  a  single  place^^^ 

They  persuaded  not  only  themselves,  but  also 
the  men-of-letters  of  all  the  other  countries  where 
the  new  learning  established  itself,  that  an  accept- 
ance of  these  rigid  limitations  was  obligatory 
upon  all  the  dramatic  poets  who  might  seek  to 
follow  in  the  footsteps  of  the  ancients.  But  for- 
tunately they  were  never  able  to  convince  the 
unlearned  public  that  it  was  wise  to  insist  on 
these  arbitrary  restrictions ;  and  so  it  was  that  the 
practical  playwrights,  who  were  trying  to  interest 
the  plain  people,  did  not  find  themselves  forced 
to  enter  the  triple-barred  cage  of  the  Unities.  The 
critics  might  protest  shrilly,  but  the  dramatists 
kept  on  working  in  freedom;  and  when  the 
spectator  had  been  amused  by  a  play  he  never 
cared  to  raise  any  objection,  even  if  the  action  did 
ramble  alo^jg  for  many  days  and  in  many  places. 

We  can  see  now  that  the  Athenian  audiences 
were  in  reality  not  more  exacting  than  the  Eng- 
lish or  the  Spanish,  since  the  code  the  Italian 
critics  promulgated  had  often  been  violated  in 
anticipation  by  the  Attic  dramatists..  Even  the 
152 


THE   DRAMA   IN  SPAIN 

Unity  of  Action  is  not  always  discoverable  in  a 
Greek  play;  and  it  is  due  to  the  accidental  con- 
ditions of  the  performance  in  the  Theater  of 
Dionysus  that  the  Unity  of  Time  and  the  Unity 
of  Place  may  seem  generally  to  be  observed.  But 
altho  the  common  sense  of  the  broad  public 
refused  to  hamper  the  playwright  by  needless 
limitations  of  his  liberty,  the  plays  of  the  Greeks 
were  not  without  immediate  and  abiding  influ- 
ence upon  modern  dramatic  literature.  In  the 
course  of  the  years,  the  severe  restraint  of  the 
Attic  drama  and  its  majestic  movement  made 
a  profound  impression  upon  the  popular  play- 
wrights, who  began  to  choose  loftkr  themes^nd 
to  build  their  plotsmorg^  ^^^nllj^  <^i^*^iy  ^^^ 
string  of  episodes  came  to  be  knit  more  closely 
together  and  the  central  characters -carpe  to  be 
more  veraciously  broup^ht^out.  The  struggle, 
which  is  aPthe  core  of  every  good  play^  was 
more  clearlv  seized  and  more  boldly,  presented. 


any  seize 
the  m6ZI( 


In  all  the  moaern  languages,  the  loftier  drama^ 
is  the  result_^L£-stimulation  of  the  actual  folk-, 
play,  as  we  find  it  in  the  middle  ages,  by  the 
study  of  a  model  supplied  by  the  Attic  sta^ 
directly  or  intlirectly.  VThe  modern  drama  is  due* 
to  a  fecundation  of  the  medieval  by  the  antique.) 
Of  the  new  drama'lic  literatures  thus  elaborated 
from  unliterary-  begir>nings,  one  may  owe  more 
than  Another ^o  the  example  of  the  great  Greeks; 
»53 


THE   DRAMA   IN  SPAIN 

but  all  of  them  owe  much, —  even  the  Spanish, 
in  which  the  influence  of  the  Renascence  is  least 
obvious. 


The  Renascence hasbeen  called  thebridge  which 
connects  the  middle  ages  with  modern  life, —  a 
bridge  more  than  one  span  of  which  was  built 
out  of  the  relics  of  antiquity;  and  altho  it  would 
be  an  overstatement  to  assert  that  the  most  of 
the  Spanish  people  did  not  care  to  go  over  to  the 
new  world  of  thought  explored  by  the  leaders  of 
the  Renascence,  it  is  not  too  much  to  suggest  that 
tho^P  of  the  Spaniards  who  did  venture  across 
carried  over  v%h  them  more  medieval  character- 
istics than  the  Italians  or  the  French  burdened 
themselves  with.  The  Renascence  was,  above  all 
things  else,  an  emancipation  of  the  human  intelli- 
gence; it  was  a  declaration  of  independence  put 
at  oncejnto  deeds ;  and  this  gift  of  freedom  the 
Spanish  people  had  no  wish  to  accept.  In  fact, 
they  were  glad  to  reject  it,  for  among  them  there 
was  no  parallel  to  the  questioning  curiosity  of 
the  Italians,  to  the  speculative  liberty  of  the  Ger- 
mans, and  to  the  mental  alertness  of  the  English. 
Willingly  they  had  accepted  the  guidance  of  the 
Inquisition ;  and  to  them  the  liberation  of  man's 
spirit  was  not  only  unwelcome, —  it  was  even 
abhorrent.  The  Spaniards  had  i)p  sympathy 
»54 


THE   DRAMA   IN  SPAIN 

with  the  sensuous  joyousness,  the  sheer  delight 
in  living,  which  stands  out  as  an  essential  ele- 
ment of  the  Renascence.  The  Spanish  ideals 
were  ever  ascetic  and  mystic, — whatever  might 
be  their  actual  practices.  However  much  they 
might  in  fact  enjoy  life,  in  theory  at  least  they 
held  it  to  be  only  a  dark  valley  of  transition ;  and 
here  the  Madrid  of  Philip  is  as  opposite  as  possi- 
ble to  the  London  of  Elizabeth  and  the  Florence 
of  the  Medici,  as  well  as  to  the  Athens  of  Pericles. 
The  evidence  of  this  hostile  attitude  toward 
the  newer  ways  of  thinking  is  abundant  on  every 
page  of  Spanish  history  and  in  every  contribution 
to  Spanish  literature;  and  nowhere  is  it  more 
clearly  visible  than  in  the  Spanish  drama,  which 
even  in  its  best  days  is  far  more  closely  related 
to  the  medieval  drama  than  is  the  later  drama 
of  France  or  even  of  England.  In  the  splendid 
epoch  of  Lope  de  Vega  and  of  Calderon  and  of 
the  throng  of  inventive  playwrights  that  encom- 
passes them  about,  the  Spanish  drama  is  strangely 
similar  to  the  drama  of  the  middk  ages.  It  is 
loose  in  its  construction,  careless  of  proportion, 
never  afraid  of  monotony  of  topic,  full  of  repeti- 
tions, devoid  of  concentration.  It  has  always  an 
air  of  improvisation;  and  altho  it  is  never  quite 
so  unliterary  as  were  most  of  the  mysteries  and 
the  miracle-plays,  it  rarely  attains  conciseness 
of  speech  org|olish  of  phrase;  and  very  seldom 

^55 


THE   DRAMA   IN  SPAIN 

indeed  does  it  aspire  to  a  true  harmony  of  plot. 
It  is  as  reckless  in  anachronism,  and  it  reveals 
the  same  absence  of  the  historic  sense  which  is 
so  distinct  a  characteristic  of  the  medieval  writers, 
to  whom,  as  it  has  been  well  said,  "past  cen- 
turies seemed  to  form  only  a  single  and  grand 
epoch  in  which  were  united  all  the  celebrities  of 
history."  It  deals  with  actions  chiefly,  but  occa- 
sionally with  emotions,  and  almost  never  with 
thought.  Its  temper  is  uncritical ;  and  its  tone  is 
sometimes  even  more  superstitious  than  was 
common  in  the  medieval  plays.  Of  course,  the 
Spanish  playwrights  soon  attained  a  technical 
skill  such  as  no  one  of  the  unknown  scribes  of 
the  middle  ages  could  achieve;  and  indeed  it  is 
this  dramaturgic  adroitness  which  saliently  dif- 
ferentiates the  brisk  Spanish  plays  from  their 
lumbering  medieval  predecessors. 

The  rise  of  the  theater  in  Spain  was  aided  by 
two  circumstances  which  were  lacking  in  Italy. 
The  Spanish  had  achieved  their  unity  as  the  re- 
sult of  a  strenuous  effort  sustained  for  years, —  an 
effort  which  had  stiffened  the  national  will  and 
aroused  the  national  consciousness;  and  they  had 
found  at  last  a  focus  of  national  life  in  their  new 
capital,  where  the  dramatist  could  make  sure  of 
all  sorts  of  spectators.  The  Spaniards  also  shared 
with  the  English  a  gift  not  bestowed  on  the  Ital- 
ians,—  they  were  makers  of  ballad|;  and  they 
156 


THE   DRAMA    IN   SPAIN 

had  thus  supplied  themselves  with  an  abundance 
of  the  material  most  fit  for  the  playwright  to 
handle,  while  the  making  of  the  ballads  had 
helped  to  train  their  poets  to  deal  directly  and 
simply  with  situation  and  with  character. 

Throughout  western  Europe  the  folk-theater 
of  the  middle  ages  is  very  much  the  same  every- 
where; and  in  France  as  in  England,  in  Italy  as 
in  Spain,  we  are  shocked  by  the  same  irreverent 
commingling  ofThe  sacred  and  the  profane, 'and 
by  the  same  obtrusion  of  realistic  farce  into  plays 
intended  for  edification.  For  a  while  this  gross 
incongruity  was  accepted  with  only  slight  pro- 
test; but  after  heroes  from  history  and  from 
romance  had  been  substituted  for  the  saints,  and 
after  the  humor  of  the  comic  episodes  had  been 
broadened  beyond  the  borders  of  decency,  the 
ecclesiastical  authorities  sometimes  became  aware 
of  the  objectionable  features.  In  Spain,  for  ex- 
ample, a  formal  law  forbade  a  priest  from  taking 
part  in  "scornful  plays  "  or  from  attending  them ; 
and  it  declared  that  such  plays  should  not  be 
performed  in  the  churches.  But  the  same  law 
specifically  authorized  a  priest  to  act  in  represen- 
tations of  the  Nativity  and  of  the  Resurrection. 
"Such  things  as  these  move  men  to  do  well  and 
be  devout  in  the  faith,  and  may  be  done  in  order 
to  remind  them  that  they  really  happened.  But 
they  must  be  performed  with  great  decency  and 
157 


THE   DRAMA   IN   SPAIN 

devotion  in  the  large  cities,  where  there  are  arch- 
bishops and  bishops  who  may  order  them,  and 
they  must  not  be  represented  in  villages  nor  poor 
places,  or  for  the  purpose  of  gain." 

If  this  law  was  actually  enforced,  the  villages 
and  poor  places  could  have  had  no  other  theatri- 
cal entertainment  than  that  supplied  by  little 
bands  of  strolling  players.  These  were  probably 
as  prevalent  in  Spain  as  in  Italy  and  in  France; 
and  their  repertory  was  as  primitive.  The  leader 
of  one  such  company  was  Lope  de  Rueda,  who 
is  hailed  as  the  founder  of  the  Spanish  theater,— 
very  much  as  Thespis  is  held  to  be  the  beginner 
of  the  Greek  drama.  He  was  at  once  sole  play- 
wright and  chief  performer.  Cervantes  tells  us 
that  "in  the  time  of  this  celebrated  Spaniard,  all 
the  apparatus  of  a  manager  was  contained  in  a 
bag,  and  consisted  of  four  white  shepherd's 
jackets,  bordered  with  gilt  leather,  four  beards 
and  wigs,  and  four  shepherd's  crooks,  more  or 
less.  .  .  .  The  stage  was  merely  composed  of 
four  square  blocks  of  wood,  upon  which  rested 
five  or  six  boards,  that  were  thus  raised  about 
four^Tpalms  from  the  ground.  .  .  .  The  furniture 
was  an  old  blanket  hung  on  two  cords,  making 
what  they  call  the  dressing-room,  behind  which 
were  the  musicians,  who  sang  old  ballads  with- 
out a  guitar."  Here  we  find  in  Spain,  just  as  we 
can  find  also  in  Greece  a  score  of  centuries  earlier, 
158 


THE   DRAMA   IN  SPAI^f^.---' 

one  important  actor  accompanied  by  a  few  singers, 
performing  upon  a  platform  set  up  in  the  market- 
place with  an  improvised  dressing-tent  behind  it. 
Exactly  what  kind  of  play  it  was  that  Thespis 
was  wont  to  act  in  his  wanderings  we  can  now 
only  guess;  but  by  good  fortune  certain  of  the 
simple  pieces  of  Lope  jk  Rueda  have  been  pre- 
served. They  are  very  simple  indeed;  but  they 
have  the  same  open  fidelity  to  the  facts  of  life 
that  we  find  in  the  English  scene  of  Mak  and  the 
Shepherds  and  in  the  French  farce  of  the  '  Tub ' ; 
and  they  are  sustained  by  the  same  humorous 
observation  of  human  nature.  One  of  them,  en- 
titled the  'Olives,'  begins  with  the  stepping  up 
upon  the  stage  of  a  Peasant,  who  calls  his  Wife. 
His  Daughter  it  is  who  comes  out  from  behind 
the  dressing-room  curtain,  to  say  that  her  mother 
is  at  a  neighbor's.  While  the  Peasant  scolds,  the 
Wife  returns,  and  bids  her  Daughter  cook  the 
father's  supper.  Then  she  asks  if  the  Peasant 
has  done  as  he  promised, —  if  he  has  planted  the 
olive-tree  ?  When  she  learns  that  this  has  been 
attended  to;  she  foresees  that  in  six  or  seven 
years  the  tree  will  yield  them  several  measures 
of  olives  and  that  by  planting  the  branches  from 
time  to  time  they  will  have  a  field  of  olives  in  a 
score  of  years ;  and  then  the  Daughter  will  sell 
them  for  two  reals  a  peck.  At  this  the  Peasant 
protests;  the  olives  are  not  worth  such  a  price. 
159 


THE   DRAMA    IN   SPAIN 

The  Wife  declares  that  they  are,  the  tree  being 
from  Cordova;  and  in  spite  of  her  husband's  ob- 
jections, she  turns  to  the  Daughter  and  orders 
the  girl  to  charge  two  reals.  The  Peasant  calls 
the  Daughter  and  bids  her  obey  her  father  and 
not  ask  so  much.  The  Wife  insists  on  the  girl's 
selling  the  olives  for  two  reals.  The  Peasant 
furiously  threatens  to  beat  the  child  if  she  does 
not  do  as  he  tells  her;  and  thereupon  the  Wife, 
also  moved  to  anger,  begins  actually  to  beat  the 
girl  for  disobedience.  While  the  Daughter  is 
beseeching  both  father  and  mother  not  to  kill 
her,  a  Neighbor  steps  up  on  the  stage  to  ask  the 
reason  of  the  outcry.  The  Peasant  explains  that 
the  cause  of  dispute  is  the  price  to  be  asked  for 
certain  olives,  and  the  Neighbor  naturally  asks  to 
see  them  that  he  may  judge  for  himself.  When 
he  is  told  that  the  tree  is  only  that  day  planted 
and  that  the  fruit  they  are  quarreling  about  will 
not  be  gathered  for  many  years,  he  laughs  at 
them  all,  crying,  * '  What  an  absurd  quarrel !  Who 
ever  saw  the  like?  The  olives  are  scarcely 
planted  —  and  yet  they  cause  the  poof  girl  to  cry. " 
Nothing  could  be  more  unpretending  than 
this  little  scene;  and  its  most  valuable  quality 
was  that  it  was  perfectly  portable,  and  that  it 
called  for  neither  scenery  nor  costumes.  It  could 
be  acted  wherever  and  whenever  four  performers 
happened  to  be  banded  together.     Quite  as  ele- 

i6o 


€rHE   DRAMA   IN   SPAIIJ^ 


mentary  as  the  '  Olives '  is  the  *  Blind  Beggars 
and  the  Boy/  written  by  a  friend  and  follower  of 
Lope  de  Rueda's,  Juan  de  Timoneda.  One  Blind 
Beggar  enters  and  whines  forth  his  customary 
chant  of  entreaty.  The  other  Blind  Beggar  comes 
on  from  the  opposite  side  and  also  intones  his 
prayer  for  alms.  A  Boy  crosses  the  stage,  and 
as  he  sees  the  first  Blind  Beggar  he  is  about  to 
flee,  recognizing  the  master  he  has  robbed  and 
deserted.  Then  the  urchin  remembers  that,  since 
his  master  cannot  see  him,  he  is  safe  so  long  as 
he  keeps  quiet.  After  a  time,  the  two  Blind  Beg- 
gars drop  into  chat  with  each  other,  while  the 
Boy  listens.  Believing  themselves  to  be  alone, 
the  two  Blind  Beggars  discuss  the  advantages  and 
disadvantages  of  their  calling;  and  at  last  the  first 
tells  the  second  how  he  has  been  robbed  by  his 
rascally  boy.  The  second  then  explains  how  he 
protects  himself  by  always  carrying  his  ducats 
sewed  in  his  cap, — whereupon  the  Boy  steals 
forward,  knocks  off  the  precious  cap,  and  escapes 
with  it.  The  owner  naturally  supposes  that  it  is 
the  man  he  has  been  speaking  with  who  has  taken 
the  cap,  and  he  asks  for  its  return ;  but  of  course 
the  other  at  once  denies  all  knowledge  of  it.  Here 
is  matter  for  a  swift  quarrel;  and  the  little  play 
ends  with  the  two  Blind  Beggars  engaged  in  an 
angry  fight. 
Even  before  the  populace  had  been  easily 
i6i 


^iV  ^^  (^    "^  '^PA^ 


amused  by  lively  trifles  like  these,  and  while  the 
mystery  was  still  at  the  hight  of  its  vogue,  pro- 
fessed poets  had  sought  to  imitate  the  more 
scholarly  attempts  of  the  Italian  men-of-letters. 
They  had  devised  pastoral-plays,  of  varying 
poetic  merit  but  always  of  a  hopeless  artificiality. 
If  any  of  these  pastoral-plays  happened  to  be 
actually  performed,  it  was  always  by  amateurs, 
for  they  were  written  to  delight  a  noble  or  a 
royal  patron,  much  as  masques  were  in  England 
not  long  after  and  the  later  mythological  ballets 
of  the  French  court.  They  were  none  of  them 
composed  to  please  a  real  public  that  had  paid 
its  money  to  see  a  genuine  play;  and,  as  might 
be  expected,  they  seem  to  have  had  little  or  no 
influence  on  the  growth  of  the  acted  drama. 
Until  Lope  de  Rueda  was  followed  by  Lope  de 
Vega,  the  literary  play  was  not  popular  and  the 
popular  play  was  not  literary.  It  was  Lope  de_- 
Vega  who  accepted  the  popular  drama,  such  as 
it  was,  and  gave  it  the  art  it  lacked.  ~~^ 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  one  great  figure  inter- 
venes between  Lope  de  Rueda  and  Lope  de  Vega — 
the  figure  of  Cervantes,  the  greatest  in  all  Spanish 
literature.  A  score  or  more  plays  did  Cervantes 
write;  and  they  were  actually  acted  with  some 
small  measure  of  success  or  —  to  use  the  words 
of  the  author  himself — "without  their  receiving 
tribute  of  cucumbers  or  other  missiles. "  Of  those 
162 


THE   DRAMA   IN  SPAIN 


♦ 


early  attempts  two  survive  to  show  that  Cer- 
vantes, like  Balzac  and  like  Tolstoi,  had  only  a 
moderate  share  of  play-making  ability.  They  are 
not  without  merit,  of  course,  for  they  came  from 
the  pen  of  Cervantes;  but  they  are  cumbrous, 
and  sluggish,  and  almost  as  ill  proportioned  as 
the  mysteries  upon  which  they  are  modeled; 
they  are  wholly  without  the  briskness  and  the 
pleasant  inventiveness  which  Lope  de  Vega  was 
soon  to  bestow  on  the  Spanish  drama.  That  Cer- 
vantes was  lacking  in  the  dramaturgic  faculty  is 
made  evident  again  by  the  plays  which  he  pub- 
lished later  in  life,  after  Lope  had  set  up  a  new 
standard.  Indisputable  is  it  that  Cervantes  was 
far  more  richly  endowed  than  Lope,  and  also 
that  his  single  splendid  achievement  in  fiction 
outweighs  all  that  Lope  ever  accomplished  in  all 
the  departments  of  literature;  but  equally  unde- 
niable is  it  that  Lope  had  the  one  thing  needful 
for  success  upon  the  stage,  and  that  this  was  pre- 
cisely the  qualification  which  Cervantes  wanted. 


Ill 

Lope  molded  the  Spanish  drama  to  suit  his 
own  gifts;  he  stamped  it  forever  with  the  impress 
of  his  own  personality ;  and  even  if  we  must  admit 
that  Calderon,  who  came  after,  also  rose  higher, 
and  that  the  younger  poet  surpassed  the  elder  in 
163 


THE   DRAMA   IN  SPAIN 

lyrical  elevation  of  several  of  his  plays,  none 
e  less  must  we  remember  always  that  the 
greatest  dramas  of  Calderon  are  examples  of  a 
class  of  which  Lope  had  set  the  first  model.  If 
we  acknowledge,  as  we  may,  that  even  Calderon 
trod  only  where  Lope  had  first  broken  the  path, 
we  must  record  that  all  the  other  dramatists  of 
Spain  were  also  followers  in  his  footsteps.  From 
out  the  numerous  mass  of  Lope  de  Vega's  works, 
it  would  be  possible  to  select  a  satisfactory  speci- 
men of  every  species  of  the  drama  as  it  has  existed 
in  Spain.  What  Lope  was,  so  was  the  Spanish 
drama.  He  came  first,  and  he  was  the  most 
original  of  all,  the  most  fertile,  the  most  indefati- 
gable, the  most  various,  the  most  multifarious. 

His  influence  on  the  stage  of  Spain  was  far 
more  potent  and  more  durable  than  that  of 
Sophodes  on  the  theater  of  Greeceor^of  Shakspere 
onjhe  drarna  of  England.  It  was  Lope  who 
earliest  discovered  how  to  hold  thejnterest  of  a 
modern  audience  by  the  easv_  intricacy  of  his 
story  and  by_Jhe_surpnsing_iiaiiet^^ 
cessive  situations,  each  artfully  prepared  for  by 
its  pre'decess^r.  If  Schlegel  found  an  ingenious 
felicity  of  plot-making  to  be  so  characteristic  of 
the  Spanish  drama  that  he  was  led  to  suspect  a 
Spanish  origin  for  any  play  in  which  he  observed 
this  quality,  it  was  to  the  practice  and  to  the  pre- 
cept of  Lope  de  Vega  that  his  fellow-dramatists 
164 


THE   DRAMA   IN  SPAIN 

owed  their  possession  of  this  merit.  One  of 
these  fellow-dramatists  it  was  who  summed  up 
the  good  points  of  the  Spanish  drama  in  lines 
which  have  been  thus  Englished  by  G.  H.  Lewes : 

Invention,  interest,  sprightly  turns  in  plays, 
Say  what  they  will,  are  Spain's  peculiar  praise  ; 
Hers  are  the  plots  which  strict  attention  seize, 
Full  of  intrigue  and  yet  disclosed  wilke-ise  : 
Hence  scenes  and  acts  her  fertile  stage  affords 
Unknown,  unrivaled  on  the  foreign  boards. 

It  was  the  lack  of  a  metropolis  which  had  helped 
to  deprive  the  Italians  of  a  drama  worthy  of  their 
intellectual  supremacy  in  the  early  Renascence^/ 
and  it  was  the  choice  of  Madrid  as  the  capital 
which  made  possible  the  sudden  outflowering  of 
the  Spanish  dramatic  literdture..  The  many  little 
bands  of  strolling  players,  sirfiilar  to  the  company 
Lope  de  Rueda  had  directed,*and  containing  per- 
formers of  both  sexes,  looked  longingly  toward 
the  court;  and  two  of  them  were  in  time  allowed 
to  settle  in  the  royal  city,  bringing  with  them 
their  elementary  repertory  of  songs  and  dances, 
of  simple  interludes  and  of  lumbering  chronicle- 
plays.  The  theater  assigned  to  each  of  these 
companies  was  as  primitive  as  the  entertainment 
they  proffered,  for  it  was  no  more  than  the  court- 
yard of  a  house.  At  the  farther  end  of  this  court- 
yard was  the  shallow  platform,  which  served  as 
165 


THE   DRAMA   IN   SPAIN 

a  Stage,  and  which  was  shielded  by  a  sloping 
roof.  Near  to  the  stage  were  a  few  benches,  and 
then  came  the  space  where  the  main  body  of  the 
rude  public  stood  throughout  the  performance, 
unprotected  from  the  weather.  Behind  them 
rose  several  tiers  of  seats,  stretching  back  almost 
to  the  house,  and  affording  accommodation  for 
the  women^ho  were  kept  apart  from  the  men. 
■J  Then  the  ro*oms  of  the  house  itself  served  as  pri- 
vate boxes ;  and  in  time  these  came  to  be  so  highly 
valued  that  the  right  to  one  passed  as  an  heirloom. 
A  few  privileged  spectators  were  allowed  seats 
on  the  sides  of  the  stage.  There  was  neither 
curtain  nor  scenery. 

The  performance  took  place  by  daylight  in  the 
early  afternoon,  so  there  was  no  need  of  artificial 
illumination.  It  began  with  the  appearance  of 
the  musicians  upon  the  stage  itself,  where  they 
played  on  the  guitar  and  sang  popular  ballads 
until  an  acceptable  audience  had  gathered  or  until 
the  boisterous  impatience  of  those  who  had 
arrived  compelled  the  actors  to  commence.  Then 
the  musicians  withdrew;  and  a  chief  performer, 
often  the  manager  himself,  appeared  to  speak  a 
prolog,  amusing  in  itself  and  abounding  in  com- 
pliments to  the  audience.  When  at  last  he  left 
the  stage  free,  the  actors  who  were  to  open  the 
play  came  out  and  the  first  act  was  performed. 
Simple  as  was  the  medieval  stage  with  its  neu- 
166 


THE   DRAMA   IN  SPAIN 

tral  ground  backed  by  the  stations,  which  became 
mansions  in  France  and  pageants  in  England, 
the  Spanish  stage_was  simpler  still,  since  the 
stations  were  abolished  and  there  remained  only 
the  neutral  ground ;;^^-Jhe  bare  platform.  Neither 
authors  nor  spectators  ever  bothered  themselves 
about  the  place  where  the  characters  were  at  any 
moment  supposed  to  be.  The  actors  then  en- 
gaged in  carrying  on  the  story  were  standing  in 
sight  of  the  audience;  and  this  was  the  sole 
essential,  the  background  being  merely  acci- 
dental. If  by  chance  it  became  necessary  for  the 
audience  to  know  just  where  the  action  was 
about  to  take  place,  then  this  information  was 
furnished  by  the  dialog  itself,  without  any  change 
of  the  stage-setting,  the  platform  remaining  bare 
of  all  scenery.  Thus  the  dramatist  was  at  liberty 
to  select  such  incidents  of  his  fable  as  he  saw  fit, 
not  having  to  consider  the  difficulty  of  making 
the  successive  places  visible  in  the  eyes  of  the 
spectators. 

When  the  first  act  was  ended  the  actors  left 
the  stage;  the  musicians  came  forward  again ;  and 
there  followed  a  song  and  dance  or  even  a  little 
ballad-farce 'to  fill  the  interval  between  the  acts 
of  the  chief  play.  Then  the  second  act  was  pre- 
sented in  its  turn ;  and  after  it  there  came  another 
song  and  dance  or  another  comical  interlude. 
The  third  act  of  the  play  was  always  the  last,  for 
167 


THE   DRAMA   IN  SPAIN 

the  Spanish  dramatists  early  accepted  a  division 
into  three  parts.  When  the  chief  play  was  finally 
concluded,  it  was  at  once  followed  by  a  farce, 
and  often  also  by  one  of  the  national  dances;  and 
then  at  last  the  entertainment  came  to  an  end, 
and  the  noisy  and  turbulent  spectators  withdrew, 
having  applauded  boisterously  if  they  thought 
they  had  had^  their  money's  worth,  and  having 
with  equal  freedom  made  vocal  their  dissatisfac- 
tion if  they  did  not  happen  to  think  so. 

These  were  the  apparently  unfavorable  condi- 
tions under  which  were  represented  the  works 
of  the  dramatic  poets  of  Spain  at  the  moment 
when  the  drama  flourished  most  exuberantly; 
and  no  one  who  knows  the  circumstances  of  the 
contemporary  theater  in  England  under  Elizabeth 
can  fail  to  perceive  the  striking  similarity.  The 
dramatic  poets  of  England,  like  the  dramatic  poets 
of  Spain,  saw  their  plays  produced  by  daylight, 
on  an  unadorned  platform,  set  up  in  what  was  no 
more  than  the  courtyard  of  an  inn,  open  to  the 
sky.  The  English  plays,  like  the  Spanish,  were 
acted  without  scenery,  before  a  noisy  throng  of 
groundlings  who  stood  in  the  pit;  and  in  Eng- 
land also  there  were  what  were  called  "jigs."  by 
the  clown  between  the  acts.  The  English  plays, 
like  the  Spanish,  were  devised  to  please  the  public 
as  a  whole  and  not  to  delight  only  a  special  class. 
Such  differences  as  there  are  between  the  Spanish 
168 


THE   DRAMA   IN   SPAIN 

drama  and  the  English  are  due  not  to  the  condi- 
tions of  the  performance,  but  directly  to  the  cha- 
racteristics of  the  two  peoples ;  and  Shakspere  is 
not  more  representative  of  the  Elizabethan  Eng- 
lishman than  is  Calderon  of  the  contemporary 
Spaniard. 

In  Spain,  as  in  England,  the  people  had  given 
proof  that  they  possessed  the  first  requisite  of  a 
truly  national  drama,  —a  steadfast  determination, 
steeled  for  instant  action.  The  Spanish  kingdom 
was  then  seemingly  at  the  very  climax  of  its 
might;  and  having  compacted  the  monarchy  and 
driven  out  the  Moors,  having  overrun  half  Europe 
and  taken  all  America  as  their  own,  the  Span- 
iards had  the  pride  of  a  chosen  people.  They 
thrilled  with  a  consciousness  of  a  lofty  destiny, 
while  at  the  same  time  they  accepted  with  enthu- 
siasm feudal  and  chivalrous  ideals  of  fidelity  and 
loyalty  and  honor.  Men  of  very  varied  individu- 
ality, they  were  united  in  their  devotion  to  the 
church,  in  which  they  had  an  unquestioning 
faith,  and  to  the  King,  who  ruled  by  divine  right 
and  who  could  do  no  wrong.  Lope  de  Vega, 
for  example,  had  been  in  his  youth  a  soldier  on 
the  Invincible  Armada;  and  later  he  became  a 
familiar  of  the  Holy  Inquisition.  It  is  true  that 
the  religious  fervor  of  the  Spaniards  was  often 
only  empty  superstition ;  and  that  it  was  in  no 
wise  incompatible  with  a  strangely  contorted 
169 


THE   DRAMA   IN  SPAIN 

ethical  code  which  approved  of  vengeance  as  a 
duty  and  justified  murder  to  remove  a  stain  from 
honor. 

The  Spanish  language  is  a  rich  and  sonorous 
tongue,  as  characteristic  of  the  race  that  speaks  it 
as  is  English  or  French;  and  in  the  hands  of  the 
dramatic  poets  Spanish  lends  itself  readily  to  the 
display  of  an  eloquence  which  only  too  often  sinks 
into  facile  grandiloquence.  One  of  the  most 
marked  peculiarities  of  these  plays  is  a  rhetorical 
redundancy  which  often  rises  into  a  lyrical  copi- 
ousness, but  which  not  infrequently  also  con- 
denses itself  into  a  sententious  apothegm.  The 
personages  taking  part  are  as  likely  to  reveal  a 
vehement  luxuriance  of  phrase  as  they  are  to  dis- 
close a  perverse  subtlety  of  intellect.  Formal 
and  pompous  their  speech  is  on  occasion;  and  at 
other  times  it  is  easy  and  natural,  refreshing  in  its 
humorous  lightness,  sparkling  with  unpremedi- 
tated wit,  and  bristling  with  pungent  proverbs. 
As  we  read  these  plays  we  are  constantly  re- 
minded that  Seneca  and  Lucan  and  Marcus  Au- 
relius  were  all  of  them  Spaniards. 


IV 

These  characteristics  of  the  language  itself,  and 
of  the  people  that  spoke  the  language,  are  familiar 
to  all  who  know  *  Don  Quixote ' ;  and  they  are 
170 


THE   DRAMA   IN  SPAIN 

made  visible  in  the  plays  of  every  Spanish  drama- 
tist, especially  in  those  of  Lope  de  Vega,  because 
there  is  scarcely  any  kind  of  drama  which  he 
was  not  the  first  to  attempt.  He  has  left  us 
farces  as  slight  in  texture  as  those  of  Lope  de 
Rueda;  mysteries  more  artfully  put  together  than 
those  of  the  medieval  scribes;  chronicle-plays  not 
unlike  those  of  his  immediate  predecessors,  but 
with  a  hightened  dramatic  interest;  dramatized 
ballads  and  romances  far  more  skilfully  wrought 
than  any  seen  on  the  stage  before  he  took  it  for 
his  own.  He  gave  a  lyric  grace  to  the  briefer 
religious  plays,  which  were  called  sacramental- 
acts;  and  he  himself  invented  the  play  of  plot 
and  intrigue  and  mystery  which  is  known  as  the 
comedy-of-cloak-and-sword.  He  showed  the 
same  fertility  of  ingenuity  in  devising  comedies 
of  incident  and  of  character.  He  solidly  con- 
structed somber  tragedies  of  honor  and  revenge. 
(He  seems  to  have  written  hundreds  of  plays  of 
every  kind  and  description ;  and  scores  of  them 
are  still  preserved  in  print.^  They  vary  greatly  in 
merit;  many  of  them  are  mere  improvisations; 
but  very  few  of  them  fail  to  display  his  dexterity, 
his  perfect  understanding  of  the  theater,  his  mas- 
tery of  stagecraft. 

The  art  of  the  playwright  is  a  finer  art  to-day, 
no  doubt;  it  is  at  once  firmer  and  more  delicate 
than  was  possible  in  the  Spain  which  was  just 
171 


THE  DRAMA   IN   SPAIN 

emerging  from  the  middle  ages;  but  the  drama- 
tists of  every  modern  language  are  greatly  in- 
debted to  the  models  set  by  LQp£L.de  Vega, — 
and  none  the  less  because  the  most  of  these  later 
writers  are  unconscious  of  their  obligation.  No- 
where has  modern  dramaturgic  craftsmanship 
been  carried  to  a  higher  pitch  of  perfection  than 
in  France;  and  it  must  never  be  forgotten  that 
the  *Cid,'  the  first  of  French  tragedies,  and  the 
*  Liar,'  the  first  of  French  comedies,  were  both  of 
them  borrowed  by  Corneille  from  Spanish  plays 
written  by  contemporary  disciples  of  Lope  de 
Vega's. 

From  out  the  immense  mass  of  Lope  de  Vega's 
dramatic  works  it  is  not  easy  to  make  choice  of 
any  single  play  as  truly  typical.  The  selection  is 
indeed  difficult  when  we  have  before  us  pieces 
of  so  many  different  classes,  from  the  sacramen- 
tal-acts and  from  mere  dramatized  anecdotes 
to  comedies  sometimes  perfervidly  lyrical  and 
sometimes  frankly  prosaic,  from  chronicle-plays 
loosely  epic  in  their  structure  to  true  tragedies 
with  an  ever-increasing  tensity  of  emotion.  But 
one  of  his  most  famous  plays  is  the  'Star  of 
Seville,'  and  perhaps  this  will  serve  as  well  as 
any  to  suggest  his  method  of  handling  a  story  on 
the  stage. 

The  first  act  begins  with  the  King  of  Castile 
and  his  evil  counselor,  Arias,  coming  upon  the 
172 


THE   DRAMA    IN   SPAIN 

stage  with  two  of  the  Alcaldes  of  Seville,  who 
compliment  the  monarch  on  his  arrival.  After 
they  withdraw,  the  King  asks  eagerly  about  a 
beautiful  girl  he  had  remarked  as  he  entered  the 
city.  Arias  tells  him  that  she  is  Estrella,  known 
as  the  Star  of  Seville  because  of  her  loveliness, 
and  that  she  is  a  sister  of  Bustos  Tabera.  The 
King  confesses  his  sudden  passion,  and  sends 
Arias  to  fetch  Bustos  to  him,  hoping  through  the 
brother  to  get  at  the  sister.  Then  two  Officers 
enter  in  turn,  each  asking  the  King  for  a  vacant 
governorship;  but  he  dismisses  them  without 
deciding.  Arias  returns  with  Bustos,  a  man  of 
blunt  honesty,  who  is  surprised  when  the  King 
proffers  the  governorship  to  him.  He  con- 
ceals his  suspicions  when  the  King  flatters  him, 
asks  about  his  family,  and  finally  promises  to 
provide  a  proper  husband  for  his  sister.  After 
the  men  have  left  the  stage  Estrella  enters,  so 
that  the  spectators  are  supposed  now  to  be  wit- 
nesses of  a  scene  in  her  home.  Accompanying 
her  is  Don  Sancho,  to  whom  she  is  betrothed  and 
with  whom  she  exchanges  protestations  of  love. 
Bustos  appears  and  tells  his  friend  of  the  King's 
intention  of  finding  a  fit  husband  for  his  sister; 
whereupon  Don  Sancho  reproaches  him  for  not 
having  informed  the  monarch  that  their  marriage 
had  been  agreed  upon.  When  they  depart,  the 
King  and  Arias  enter,  and  the  dialog  makes  it 
173 


THE  DRAMA  IN  SPAIN 

clear  that  they  are  now  to  be  imagined  as  stand- 
ing at  the  door  of  Estrella's  dwelling.  The  King 
has  come  to  visit  the  brother  in  hope  of  getting 
speech  with  the  sister:  but  Bustos,  when  he 
appears,  finds  excuses  for  not  asking  the  King 
to  enter  the  house.  So  the  monarch  takes  the 
brother  off  with  him,  leaving  Arias  behind  to 
corrupt  the  sister.  When  the  stage  is  again  left 
empty,  Estrella  enters  with  her  maid-servant; 
and  therefore  the  audience  perceives  that  they 
are  within  the  house  as  before.  Arias  presents 
himself  to  tell  Estrella  of  the  King's  passion  for 
her;  but  her  sole  answer  is  to  turn  her  back  on 
him  and  walk  out  of  the  room.  Thereupon 
Arias  promptly  bribes  the  servant  to  admit  the 
King  that  night.  After  they  depart,  there  is  a 
scene  at  the  palace;  Arias  comes  in  to  report,  and 
the  delighted  monarch  bids  him  see  that  the  ser- 
vant is  well  rewarded.  Then  the  King  and  his 
evil  counselor  leave  the  stage  empty  and  bring 
to  an  end  the  first  act, —  an  act  of  swift  and 
spirited  exposition,  taking  the  spectator  at  once 
into  the  heart  of  the  situation  and  exciting  the 
interest  of  expectancy. 

The  second  act  opens  with  the  admission  of 
the  King  into  Estrella's  house,  and  with  the  unex- 
pected return  of  Bustos,  who  confronts  the  in- 
truder in  the  dark  and  demands  his  name.  The 
King  has  to  declare  himself;  but  the  sturdy  fellow 
«74 


THE   DRAMA   IN  SPAIN 

pretends  not  to  believe  this,  asserting  that  the 
monarch,  being  the  fountain  of  honor,  would 
never  have  come  there  to  bring  dishonor.  The 
King  is  thus  forced  to  cross  swords  with  the  sub- 
ject, but  he  escapes  unhurt  as  soon  as  the  ser- 
vants bring  lights.  Bustos  hangs  the  treacherous 
maid-servant,  and  bids  his  sister  prepare  for  her 
immediate  wedding  with  Don  Sancho.  In  the 
later  scenes  the  King,  resolved  on  a  private  ven- 
geance for  a  private  affront,  decides  to  have 
Bustos  made  away  with  by  some  devoted  soldier; 
and  at  the  suggestion  of  Arias  he  sends  for  Don 
Sancho.  The  monarch  explains  that  he  needs 
to  have  a  guilty  man  slain,  and  gives  Don  Sancho 
a  written  warrant  for  the  deed;  but  the  loyal 
subject  prefers  to  rely  on  the  royal  word,  and 
destroys  the  authorization,  agreeing  to  slay  the 
man  whose  name  is  written  in  the  sealed  paper 
given  to  him  by  the  King.  Don  Sancho,  left  alone, 
receives  a  letter  from  Estrella,  telling  him  that 
her  brother  desires  them  to  be  married  that  very 
day.  The  soldier  is  doubly  overjoyed,  for  this  is 
now  his  wedding  morn,  and  the  King  has  just 
confided  to  him  a  dangerous  task.  Then  he 
opens  the  paper  to  find  that  the  name  of  the  man 
he  is  to  kill  is  Bustos  Tabera.  Horror-stricken, 
he  debates  his  duty,  only  to  decide  at  last  that 
he  must  obey  the  King's  command,  kill  his 
best  friend  and  thereby  give  up  his  bride.  At 
»75 


THE  DRAMA   IN  SPAIN 

this  moment  Estrella's  brother  enters,  and,  to  his 
astonishment,  Don  Sancho  forces  a  quarrel  on 
him.  They  draw ;  Bustos  is  slain ;  and  Don  Sancho 
is  led  away  to  prison.  Next  the  spectators  are 
shown  Estrella's  happiness  as  she  is  decking 
herself  for  the  bridal.  But  all  too  soon  come  the 
Alcaldes,  bearing  the  body  of  Bustos,  and  telling 
her  that  the  murderer  of  her  brother  is  the 
bridegroom  she  is  awaiting.  And  here  ends 
the  second  act,  wrought  to  a  high  pitch  of  in- 
tensity, with  sudden  alternations  of  hope  and 
despair. 

What  happens  in  the  third  act  may  be  more 
briefly  indicated.  Estrella  comes  to  the  King  and 
claims  vengeance  on  the  murderer  of  her  brother, 
—  the  man  whom  she  herself  loves.  The  mon- 
arch (whose  passion  has  now  faded  as  quickly  as 
it  had  blazed  up)  gives  her  the  key  of  Don  San- 
cho's  cell,  and  with  it  the  power  of  disposing 
of  the  murderer  as  she  pleases.  Thickly  veiled, 
she  goes  to  the  prison,  leads  her  lover  forth,  and 
bids  him  go  free.  But  when  he  discovers  who 
it  is  has  released  him,  he  rejects  his  freedom  at 
the  hands  of  the  sister  of  his  victim.  He  returns 
to  his  cell,  and  as  he  refuses  to  give  any  motive 
for  the  murder,  the  civil  authorities  condemn  him 
to  death  —  altho  the  King  tries  to  influence  the 
sentence  of  the  Alcaldes,  and  even  thinks  he  has 
succeeded,  only  to  be  taken  aback  by  their  official 
176 


THE   DRAMA   IN  SPAIN 

4 

independence.  So  the  monarch  has  at  last  to 
declare  that  he  himself  gave  Don  Sancho  the  fatal 
order.  With  the  fanatical  loyalty  of  the  time, 
one  of  the  Alcaldes  remarks  that  no  doubt  his 
Majesty  had  a  good  reason  for  this  command. 
But  none  the  less  does  the  blood  of  Bustos  sepa- 
rate the  two  lovers,  and  they  bid  each  other  fare- 
well forever,  to  the  astonishment  and  admiration 
of  the  sovran.  The  comic  servant  of  Don  Sancho 
has  the  last  word,  addressed  straight  to  the  audi- 
ence: **You  have  heard  the  tragedy  Lope  has 
written  for  you,  and  never  can  you  forget  the 
Star  of  Seville." 

Here  we  have  a  painting  of  the  passions  by 
means  of  the  primary  colors  only  and  with  the 
boldest  contrasts.  Here  we  have  a  rapid  succes- 
sion of  surprisingsituations,  following  one  another 
so  closely  that  we  have  scarce  time  to  grasp  their 
full  meaning.  But  whatever  defects  the  drama 
may  disclose  when  dissected  critically  in  the 
library,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  it  would 
always  be  interesting  in  the  theater  itself,  before 
Spanish  spectators  in  absolute  sympathy  with 
the  high-strung  magnanimity  of  the  hero  and  the 
heroine.  It  is  like  a  dramatized  ballad;  and  not 
a  little  lyrical  hyperbole  lingers  in  the  dialog,  side 
by  side  with  the  homeliest  directness  of  speech. 
This  admixture  of  th^  toplofty^ ;^nd  of  thpjri^ttpr^ 
of-fact  is  most  characteristic  of  the  Spanish  drama, 
177 


THE  DRAMA   IN  SPAIN 

» 

which  made  no  formal  distinction  between  tra- 
gedy and  comedy, — following  the  medieval  prac- 
tice rather  than  the  doctrine  of  the  Renascence. 
A  play  with  a  tragic  climax  might  have  comic 
incidents  and  comic  characters,  just  as  a  play  of 
humorous  intention  was  likely  to  contain  at  least 
one  duel  with  a  possibly  fatal  termination. 

In  almost  every  piece  we  find  the  gracioso,  as 
the  Spaniards  call  the  conventional  comic  ser- 
vant of  the  hero,  whose  task  it  is  to  supply  fun 
at  intervals  and  to  relax  by  a  laugh  the  tension 
of  the  overwrought  situations.  Like  the  modern 
melodramatists,  the  Spanish  playwrights  under- 
stood the  value  of  "comic  relief,"  as  it  is  termed 
to-day.  The  gracioso  has  a  part  of  varying  im- 
portance; sometimes  he  is  a  mere  clown  always 
trying  to  be  funny  and  yet  having  but  little  to  do 
with  the  plot;  sometimes  he  is  a  clever  fellow, 
quick-witted  and  sharp-tongued  and  therefore  a 
chief  factor  in  the  intrigue;  sometimes  he  serves 
as  a  chorus  to  voice  a  common-sense  opinion  as 
to  the  superfine  heroics  of  his  master, — and  this 
he  does  at  the  end  of  the  '  Star  of  Seville,'  for  in- 
stance; and  sometimes,  with  the  assistance  of  a 
female  partner,  he  provides  in  the  underplot  a 
parody  of  the  main  story  of  the  play.  The  rela- 
tion of  Sancho  Panza  to  Don  Quixote  is  that  'of 
the  gracioso  to  the  hero;  and  indeed  there  is  no 
better  example  of  the  gracioso  anywhere  than 
Sancho, —  except  that  the  hasty  playwrights 
178 


THE   DRAMA   IN   SPAIN 

never  gave  the  gracioso  the  vital  individuality 
which  the  genius  of  the  novelist  bestowed  on 
Don  Quixote's  squire.  The  gracioso  is  plain- 
spoken  at  times,  but  he  is  never  so  foul-mouthed 
as  are  not  a  few  of  the  comic  personages  in  the 
Elizabethan  plays.  Indeed,  the  Spanish  drama 
is  distinctly  more  decent,  both  in  word  and  in 
deed,  than  the  English  drama  which  was  con- 
temporary with  it. 

In  Lope's  hands  the  gracioso  was  more  easily 
witty  than  in  Calderon's,  just  as  Lope's  lighter 
pieces  were  more  gracefully  humorous  than  were 
those  of  his  great  follower.  Lope  was  naturally 
gay  and  seemed  to  improvise  laughter-provoking 
intrigues,  whereas  Calderon  laboriously  con- 
structed his  humorous  situations,  with  skilful 
certainty,  no  doubt,  but  with  little  spontaneity. 
The  fun  of  Calderon's  '  House  with  Two  Doors' 
is  indisputable,  but  it  is  rather  mechanical  when 
contrasted  with  Lope's  playful  comedy,  the  title 
of  which  in  English  would  be  the  '  Dog  in  the 
Manger.'  Here  Lope  revealed  a  delicacy  of  per- 
ception into  feminine  psychology;  his  heroine  is 
a  true  woman,  whereas  his  hero  is  a  pitiful  crea- 
ture, finding  a  father  by  fraud;  and  in  the  author's 
bringing  about  the  marriage  which  ends  the 
play,  we  have  another  instance  of  the  careless 
cynicism  and  of  the  moral  obtuseness  which 
accompanied  the  religious  enthusiasm  of  the 
Spaniards. 

»79 


THE  DRAMA   IN  SPAIN 


Calderon  accepted  the  several  dramatic  spe- 
cies which  Lope  de  Vega  had  devised  for  his  own 
use, — just  as  Shakspere  took  over  Marlowe's 
formula  in  his  youth  and  in  his  maturity  bor- 
rowed Fletcher's  also.  But  Calderon  modified 
scarcely  at  all  the  framework  his  predecessor  had 
prepared.  In  general  his  craftsmanship  is  more 
careful  than/  Lope's, —  altho  his  expositions  are 
inferior,  being  often  huddled  into  a  long  speech 
or  two,  as  artificial  almost  as  the  prologs  of 
Euripides  or  Plautus,  whereas  Lope's  opening 
scenes  are  marvels  of  clever  presentation,  taking 
the  spectators  immediately  into  the  center  of  the 
action. 

After  the  plot  is  once  set  in  motion  Calderon 
has  a  more  vigorous  grasp  of  his  situations  than 
Lope,  and  a  stronger  determination  to  get  out  of 
them  all  they  contain  of  effect.  Not  only  is  his 
technic  more  conscious  and  more  artful,  but  also 
his  nature  is  richer,  whereby  he  is  enabled  to 
pierce  deeper  into  his  subject;  he  is  more  of  a 
poet  than  Lope.  Inferior  in  comedy,  he  is  supe- 
rior in  tragedy,  in  his  vigorous  handling  of  themes 
of  terror  and  horror,  of  supernatural  fontasy  and 
of  ghastly  gloom.  Incomparable  in  his  invention 
of  somber  situations,  he  is  ever  what  Lowell 
called  him,  an  "Arab  soul  in  Spanish  feathers." 
i8b 


THE   DRAMA   IN  SPAIN 

His  plots  are  unfailingly  romantic,  even  tho  there 
are  realistic  touches  here  and  there  in  his  drawing 
of  character, —  as,  for  example,  in  that  fine,  bold 
drama  of  the  'Alcalde  of  Zalamea,'  in  which  the 
peasant-judge  has  a  grim  humor  of  his  own. 

Calderon's  acceptance  of  the  tenets  of  his  church 
was  quite  as  unhesitating  as  Lope's,  and  his 
religion  was  even  more  ardent.  But  his  faith 
was  medieval  in  its  narrowness;  and  this  sadly 
lessens  the  final  value  of  the  plays  in  which  he 
sought  to  embody  spiritual  themes.  Altho  he 
reveled  in  the  supernatural,  his  views  of  the 
other  world  seem  now  as  childish  as  Marlowe's; 
and  the  mind  of  the  Spanish  playwright  was  in- 
capable of  any  such  philosophic  speculation  as 
we  find  more  than  once  in  the  English  poet's 
'Doctor  Faustus.'  Even  in  his  ecclesiastical 
dramas  intended  to  be  performed  in  the  streets 
on  Corpus  Christi  day,  the  so-called  sacramental- 
acts, — which  were  religious  masques,  descended 
from  the  medieval  miracles  and  moralities, — 
Calderon  inclines  to  make  the  allegory  unspeak- 
ably obvious,  to  bring  the  mysteries  of  religion 
down  to  plain  matter-of-fact,  and  in  short  to 
produce  the  concrete  out  of  the  abstract. 

Yet  his  spectral  muse  inspired  him  in  the  com- 
position of  more  than  one  very  striking  play,  on 
subjects  charged  with  spiritual  suggestion.  One 
of  these  is  the  *  Devotion  of  the  Cross ' ;  and  an- 
i8i 


THE   DRAMA   IN  SPAIN 

Other,  quite  as  direct  in  its  disclosure  of  the 
medievalism  of  the  Spanish,  is  the  'Wonder- 
working Magician.'  In  this  latter  we  are  made 
acquainted  with  Cyprian,  a  young  student  of 
Antioch,  who  burns  with  unholy  passion  for  a 
Christian  maid,  Justina.  To  possess  her  he  sells 
his  soul  to  the  Devil,  writing  the  dire  compact 
with  his  own  blood.  The  Devil  gives  the  stu- 
dent a  year's  instruction  in  necromancy;  and  he 
also  sets  the  powers  of  darkness  at  work  to 
seduce  the  girl.  But  when  at  length  the  Evil 
Spirit  tries  to  carry  off  the  maid,  she  proclaims 
her  faith  and  he  has  to  release  her.  Baffled  by 
her  resistance,  the  Devil  seeks  to  deceive  the  stu- 
dent by  a  phantom.  A  cloaked  figure  enters  and 
bids  Cyprian  follow;  but  when,  supposing  he 
has  Justina  in  his  arms  at  last,  he  joyfully  takes 
off  the  cloak,  he  discovers,  to  his  horror,  that  he  is 
clasping  a  fleshless  skeleton, —  who  tells  him 
that  *'such  are  the  glories  of  the  world!"  The 
student  insists  on  an  explanation;  and  the  Evil 
One  has  to  admit  that  he  cannot  keep  his  bar- 
gain since  Justina  is  under  the  protection  of  a 
superior  power.  It  is  to  this  power,  therefore, 
that  Cyprian  appeals  when  the  Devil  tries  to  bear 
him  away.  So  the  student  also  becomes  a  Chris- 
tian; and  he  and  Justina  are  united  in  death,  both 
being  burnt  as  martyrs  to  their  faith. 

In  these  plays  Calderon  shows  himself  a  true 
182 


THE   DRAMA   IN  SPAII^ 

Spaniard,  as  Lope  was  also,  of  a  temperament  not 
reflective  but  essentially  sensuous,  satisfied  to 
deal  with  the  externals  of  the  mystery  of  life  and 
not  craving  an  internal  solution.  What  inter- 
ested him  in  a  plot  was  what  the  personages  did 
rather  than  what  they  were;  and  here  we  see 
that  the  difference  between  Calderon  and  Lope 
de  Vega  is  not  in  kind  but  in  degree.  Both 
of  them  deal  with  situation  rather  than  with 
character.  The  fiery  young  adventurers  who 
woo  and  seek  revenge  in  Calderon's  plays,  as  in 
Lope's,  are  all  closely  akin ;  they  are  first  cousins 
to  one  another,  with  a  strong  family  likeness; 
they  are,  as  Goethe  called  them,  *' all  bullets  cast 
in  one  mold,"  with  the  same  unreflecting  bravery 
and  the  same  sense  of  honor  as  something  out- 
side of  themselves  and  wholly  unrelated  to  con- 
duct,—  *' a  matter  of  form  rather  than  of  feeling," 
as  Lewes  said. 

VI 

Calderon  is  a  great  playwright,  no  doubt,  and 
so  is  Lope  also ;  but  it  may  be  doubted  whether 
either  of  them  is  truly  to  be  considered  as  a  great 
dramatist.  ,  Striking  as  are  their  best  plays,  loftily 
lyrical  as  the  language  may  be  on  occasion,  start- 
lingly  effective  as  the  successive  situations  are, 
we  do  not  find  in  them  an  exquisite  harmony 
and  a  beautiful  proportion  of  the  parts  to  the 
183 


THE  DRAMA  IN  SPAIN 

whole;  we  do  not  thrill  with  an  irresistible  ap- 
peal to  our  common  humanity;  we  cannot  but  be 
conscious  that  now  and  again  the  story  has  been 
twisted  arbitrarily  for  the  sake  of  the  incidents; 
and  we  fail  to  feel  ourselves  swept  forward  by  an 
inexorable  movement  toward  an  inevitable  end. 
/Lope  de  Vega  was  the  earliest  of  the  host  of 
Spanish  playwrights,  and  Calderon  was  almost 
the  latest,  outliving  most  of  the  other  dramatic 
poets  who  had  also  revealed  surpassing  fertil- 
ity of  invention,— G_uiUen_dje.. Castro,  to  whom 
Corneille  owed  the  *Cid,'  Alarcon,  from  whom 
he  borrowed  the  *  Liar, '  and  Tirso  de  Molina,  to 
whom  Moliere  was  indebted  for  the  imperishable 
figure  of  Don  Juan.  There  had  been  only  two 
playhouses  in  Madrid  when  Lope  de  Vega  began 
to  write  for  the  theater;  and  before  Calderon 
closed  his  career  there  were  twoscore.  The 
simple  platform  which  had  served  at  first  as  a 
stage  had  got  itself  in  time  some  sort  of  scenery; 
and  it  was  capable  at  last  of  some  sort  of  me- 
chanical effects.  In  the  'Wonder-working  Ma- 
gician,' for  example,  the  Devil  flees  away  finally 
on  the  back  of  a  fiery  serpent, —  just  as  Medea  at 
the  end  of  the  drama  of  Euripides  is  borne  off  by  a 
dragon;  and  probably  the  device  whereby  this 
spectacular  marvel  was  accomplished  was  as 
elementary  and  as  obvious  in  Madrid  as  it  had 
been  in  Athens. 

184 


THE   DRAMA   IN  SPAIN 

4.0|2e^de  Vega  was  a  contemporary  of  Shak- 
spere;  and  Calderon  survived  Moliere,  who  may 
be  called  the  real  molder  of  the  modern  drama. 
Before  Calderon's  death,  Racine  had  elaborated  a 
tragedy  as  severe  as  that  of  the  Greek ;  but  there 
is  no  trace  of  any  immediate  influence  of  the 
French  stage  upon  the  Spanish.  Even  the  dra- 
matists of  England  under  Elizabeth  responded  to 
the  Renascence  and  profited  by  it  far  more  than 
the  playwrights  of  Spain,  who  refused  absolutely 
to  avail  themselves  of  the  marvelous  model 
which  the  drama  of  the  Greeks  provided,  just  as 
they  had  rejected  also  the  intellectual  liberty 
which  was  the. precious  gift  that  accompanied 
the  revival  of  learning.  In  this  refusal  and  in  this 
rejection  we  see  the  reasons  why  the  playwrights 
of  Spain,  with  all  their  lyric  affluence  and  all  their 
luxuriance  of  invention,  have  left  us  plays  which 
are  almost  as  medieval  in  their  handling  of  the 
larger  problems  of  life  as  they  are  in  their  form. 


i8^ 


f\ 


VI.    THE  DRAIV^  IN  ENGLAND 


WHILE  the  Spaniards  were  thrusting  out  the 
Moors  and  achieving  the  national  unity 
which  had  to  precede  the  extension  of  their  rule 
over  much  of  Europe  and  most  of  America,  the 
English  were  slowly  making  ready  for  that  sharp 
contest  with  Spain  the  winning  of  which  was  to 
permit  them  to  expand  in  their  turny  The  inhabi- 
tants of  the  British  Isles,  dissimilar  in  so  many 
ways  from  the  people  of  the  Il^erian^  peninsula, 
were  like  them  in  their  strenuous  individuality, 
in  their  clear  knowledge  of  what  they  wanted, 
and  in  their  unbending  determination  to  achieve 
the  object  of  their  desires;  and  therefore  they 
also  were  ripe  for  an  outflowering  of  the  drama. 
^\n  both  countries  wide  popularity  had  been  at- 


tained by  the  miracle-plays  and  the  moralities, 
even  tho  these  were  often  narrative  and  spec- 
tacular rather  than  truly  dramatic  —  even  tho 
thfi^  writers  preferred  to  present  the  successive 
incidents  of  a  hero's  existence  rather  than  to  deal 
186 


THE   DRAMA   IN   ENGLAND 

more  adequately  with  the  crisis  of  his  career. 
In  both  countries  the  first  task  of  the  professional  , 
playwrights,  when  they  should  come  into  posses- 
sion of  the  theater,  would  be  to  compact  the  ram- 
bling  story  and  to  concentrate  attention  upon  the 
more  significant  incidents.      In   both   countries'"  ! 
again,  the  professional  playwrights' did  not  hastily     \ 
discard  the  dramatic  form  which  had  been  devised 
in  the  middle  ages;  they  accepted  it  willingly,   ^ 
and  modified  it  only  so  far  as  might  be  necessary. 
That  in  England  more  modification  was  found 
needful  than  in  Spain  was  due  in  part  to  the  dif- 
ferent reception  accorded  to  the  revival  of  learn- 
ing.    While  the  Spanish  people  had  little  sym- 
pathy with  the  Renascence  and  strove  to  reject 
it,  preferring  to  cherish  the  ideals  they  had  in- 
herited from  the  middle  ages,  the  English  peopJe_ 
felt  the  influence  of  the  ne\^  movement  pro-^« 
foundly;  in  their  own  fashion  they  profited  by 
it;  and  by  it  they  were  made  ready  for  the  Re- ^ 
formation,  which  was  as  welcome  to  the  stalwart  •' 
Englishmen  as  it  was  abhorrent  to  the  devout 
Spaniards.     Even  in  the  drama  the  Spanish  atti- 
tude toward  the  new  learning  was  almost  hostile"; 
and  Lope  de  Vega  tells  us  frankly  that,  as  he 
wrote  solely  to  please  the  populace,  he  locked  up 
Plautus  and  Terence  out  of  sight  while  he  was  at 
work  on  a  play.     But  the  English  attitude,  stur-  --^ 
dily  independent  as  it  was,  cannot  be  called  un-  — 
187 


THE   DRAMA  IN   ENGLAND 

friendly.  The  London  play-maker,  unawed  by 
any  authority  and  always  testing  the  treasures  of 
antiquity  before  he  took  them  for  his  own,  was 
yet  ready  enough  —  if  he  found  they  had  any- 
thing to  teach  him  —  to  learn  from  the  ancients 
or  even  from  the  sophisticated  Italians,  whom 
he  accepted  as  true  interpreters  of  the  classics. 
What  he  borrowed  at  first  might  be  of  little 
value, —  like  the  ghosts  who  stalked  out  of  Sen- 
eca's sonorous  pages  to  thrill  the  nerves  of  the 
Elizabethans;  but  in  the  course  of  time,  not  a 
few  of  the  English  playwrights  came  to  appre- 
ciate the  weight  and  mass  which  give  dignity 
and  power  to  the  Attic  drama.  We  can  discover 
in  several  of  the  most  gifted  of  the  dramatic  poets 
who  made  the  reign  of  Elizabeth  so  glorious,  a 
readiness  to  accept  a  Greek  play,  not  as  a  model 

-to  be  copied  slavishly,  but  rather  as  an  example 
to  stimulate  nobly,  j  They  refused  always  to  sub- 
mit themselves  absolutely  to  the  rigid  rules  drawn 
up  by  the  Italian  critics ;  but  none  the  less  were 
they  inspired  now  and  again  to  emulate  the 
direct  movement  and  the  harmonious  proportion 
of  the  Athenian  masterpieces. 

/  In  England  the  religious  drama  had  about  ex- 
hausted its  vitality  when  the  secular  drama  was 
most  abundantly  flourishing;  and  of  a  truth  its 
work  was  then  accomplished  in  that  it  had  shown 
how  a  narrative  could  be  presented  in  dialog  and 

i88 


THE   DRAMA   IN   ENGLAND 

in  that  it  had  encouraged  a  wide-spread  love  of 
acting,  which  was  likely  to  call  into  existence  a 
body  of  professional  players,  ready  to  support 
properly  the  performance  of  a  more  artistic  drama, 
whenever  this  :.'hould  be  developed.  There  was 
acting  everywhere  throughout  England,  under 
the  rule  of  the  Tudors, —  acting  of  miracle-plays 
by  the  gilds  on  Corpus  Christi  day,  acting  of 
moralities  in  the  grammar-schools,  acting  of  --Z 
comic  and  legendary  episodes  on  the  village- 
greens.  From  the  amateurs  who  were  thus 
proving  themselves,  there  were  in  time  recruited 
little  bands  of  professional  performers  dependent 
for  their  livelihood  on  their  technical  skill. 

These  companies  of  strollers)— like  the  group 
-0f  players  who  came  to  Elsinore  at  Hamlet's  in- 
vitation—  had  no  rich  repertory  to  reward  the  at- 
tention of  the  audiences  that  came  flocking  to  see 
them  perform  in  the  town-hall,  in  the  courtyard 
of  the  village-inn,  or  in  the  open  market-place. 
They  may  have  had  a  chance  scene  or  two  of 
farcical  briskness,  perhaps  elaborated  from  a  hu- 
morous episode  in  some  forgotten  miracle-play ; 
and  they  may  have  had  a  fragmentary  chronicle- 
play  or  a  dramatized  ballad-tale,  like  that  which 
Hamlet  caused  to  be  acted  l5efore  the  King.  They  v\ 
did  have  certainly  what  were  culled  interludes^  i^^ 
often  as  didactically  dull  as  the  moralities  from 
which  these  interludes  had  been  derived.  One 
189 


THE   DRAMA    IN    ENGLANr/ 

contemporary  of  Shakspere's  has  left  us  the 
record  of  a  stage-play  which,  w'.^en  he  was  a 
child,  he  had  seen  acted  by  wandering  performers 
before  the  mayor  and  the  aldermein  of  the  town. 
"  The  play  was  called  the  *  Cr/idle  of  Security,' 
wherein  was  personated  a  king  .  .  .  with  his 
courtiers  of  several  kinds,  amongst  which  three 
ladies  were  in  special  grace  with  him ;  and  they, 
keeping  him  in  delight  and  pleasures,  drew  him 
from  his  graver  consellors  .  .  .  that,  in  the  end, 
they  got  him  to  lie  down  in  a  cradle  upon  the 
stage,  where  these  three  ladies,  joining  in  a  sweet 
song,  rocked  him  asleep  that  he  snorted  again ; 
and  in  the  meantime  conveyed  under  the  clothes 
wherewithal!  he  was  covered,  a  vizard,  like  a 
swine's  snout,  upon  his  face,  with  three  wire 
chains  fastened  thereunto,  the  other  ends  thereof 
being  holden  severally  by  these  three  ladies  who 
fall  to  singing  again,  and  then  discovered  his  face 
that  the  spectators  might  see  how  they  had 
transformed  him,  going  on  with  their  singing. 
Whilst  all  this  was  acting,  there  came  forth  .  .  . 
two  old  men,  the  one  in  blue  with  ...  his 
mace  on  his  shoulder,  the  other  in  red  with  a 
drawn  sword  in  his  hand  .  .  .  ;  and  so  they 
two  went  along  in  a  soft  pace  .  .  .  till  at  last 
they  came  to  the  cradle  when  all  the  court  was 
in  the  greatest  jollity ;  and  then  the  foremost  old 
man  with  his  mace  stroke  a  fearful  blow  upon 
190 


THE   DRAMA   IN   ENGLAND 

the  cradle,  whereat  all  the  courtiers,  with  the 
three  ladies  and  the  vizard,  all  vanished ;  and  the 
desolate  prince  starting  up  barefaced  ...  made 
a  lamentable  complaint  of  his  miserable  case,  and 
so  was  carried  away  by  wicked  spirits.  This 
prince  did  personate  .  .  .  the  Wicked  of  the 
World;  the  three  ladies,  Pride,  Covetousness 
and  Luxury;  the  two  old  men  the  End  of  the 
World  and  the  Last  Judgment." 

It  was  with  such  barren  stuff  as  this  that  the 
strolling  actors  were  trying  to  amuse  the  country- 
folk, altho  many  plays  of  a  solider  substance 
may  have  been  available,  some  broader  in  humor 
and  some  more  direct  in  action.  Yet  even  in  the 
performance  of  so  primitive  a  play  as  this,  there 
was  some  scope  for  acting.  The  performers 
were  slowly  training  themselves  as  best  they 
could,  making  ready  for  the  personation  of  cha- 
racters deeper  and  subtler  than  any  that  had  yet 
spoken  English ;  and  thus  they  were  rediscover- 
ing the  principles  of  the  histrionic  art. 


II 

r 

Actors  fit  for  their  purpose  and  audiences  both 
abundant  and  expectant, — these  were  awaiting 
the  English  poets  who,  not  despising  the  acted 
drama,  rude  as  it  was,  should  perceive  the  possi- 
bility of  improving  it,  and  who  should  therefore 
191 


THE   DRAMA   IN   ENGLAND 

make  themselves  masters  of  it,  so  that  they  might 
slowly  lift  it  to  the  level  of  literature.  But  the 
A  earlier  dramatic  efforts  of  the  men-of-letters  were 
academic  rather  than  popular;  and  they  can  have 
had  but  small  direct  influence  upon  the  acted 
drama.  A  schoolmaster,  for  example,  familiar 
with  the  plots  of  Plautus,  rimed  an  amusing  imi- 
tation to  be  performed  by  his  clever  boys  in  the 
great  hall  of  the  school;  and  yet  this  'Ralph 
Roister  Doister,'  despite  its  copying  from  the 
antique,  is  not  without  a  certain  English  vivacity 
of  its  own.  Another  scholar,  a  bishop  this  time, — 
if  indeed  the  author  of 'Gammer  Gurton's  Needle' 
was  a  bishop, — was  responsible  for  a  farce,  frank 
of  speech,  rank  with  the  flavor  of  the  soil,  and  full 
of  hearty  fun,  but  not  unlike  the  farces  of  the 
middle  ages  and  the  broader  scenes  of  the  mys- 
teries, that  of  Mak  and  the  Shepherds,  for  exam- 
ple. A  poet  of  culture,  George  Gascoigne,  freely 
Englished  a  prose  farce,  the  *  Supposes,'  which 
the  Italian  Ariosto  had  combined  out  of  Latin 
material.  Two  courtiers  collaborated  in  writing 
'Gorboduc,'  an  alleged  tragedy  of  mortal  tedium, 
in  which  everything  that  might  be  of  interest  is 
merely  narrated  and  never  once  shown  in  action. 
This  undramatic  attempt  of  Norton  and  Sackville 
was  devised  in  obvious  imitation  of  Seneca;  and 
it  possessed  elaborate  choruses,  preliminary  dumb- 
shows,  and  rhetorical  disquisitions.  Nevertheless, 
192 


THE   DRAMA   IN   ENGLAND 

unfitted  as  it  was  for  any  stage,  it  was  actually 
acted — but  only  in  what  we  may  term  private 
theatricals.  It  was  even  approved  by  Sir  Philip 
Sidney,  who  held  it  up  as  a  model,  altho  he  was 
forced  to  regret  that  it  did  not  observe  the  Unities 
of  Time  and  Place.  'Gorboduc'  was  distributed 
into  five  acts,  perhaps  because  Horace  had  de- 
clared this  to  be  the  only  proper  division  —  but 
more  probably  because  Seneca  had  set  the  exam- 
ple ;  and  it  was  written  in  unrimed  iambic  pen- 
tameter, — in  what  we  know  now  as  blank  verse, — 
which,  in  the  hands  of  later  dramatic  poets,  was 
to  reveal  itself  as  an  instrument  of  unsurpassable 
vigor,  delicacy,  and  variety.  However  poor  a 
thing  *  Gorboduc '  is  in  itself,  it  deserved  well  in 
that  it  bequeathed  to  us  the  large  framework  of 
five  acts  and  the  infinite  possibilities  of  blank 
verse. 

While  scholars  thus  vainly  amused  themselves 
with  dramatic  efforts  which  were  never  intended 
to  be  performed  except  by  a  group  of  amateurs 
before  an  audience  of  dilettants,  the  professional 
actors,  banded  into  little  companies,  had  called 
into  being  professional  playwrights  able  to  drama- 
tize the  stories  of  the  Italian  novelists  and  the 
themes  of  the  Latin  poets,  then  being  translated 
in  quick  succession.  These  theatrical  compiler^ 
whose  names  are  mostly  unknown  to  us  now 
and  whose  pieces  have  rarely  been  preserved, 
^9} 


u 


THE   DRAMA   IN   ENGLAND 

cared  no  more  for  the  rules  of  the  Renascence 
critics,  or  for  the  strict  imitation  of  the  ancient 
dramatists,  than  did  the  ignorant  spectators  before 
whom  their  hasty  dialogs  were  to  be  performed. 
They  gave  no  thought  to  theory;  they  took  the 
theater  as  they  found  it;  and  what  they  tried  to 
do  was  to  get  new  subjects  to  treat  in  the  old  way, 
in  the  way  with  which  the  play-going  public  had 
already  been  pleased.  That  is  to  say,  these  pro- 
fessional playwrights,  having  no  marked  drama- 
turgic capacity,  followed  the  later  tradition  of 
the  medieval  drama,  setting  on  the  stage  all  the 
incidents  of  a  prolonged  fiction,  just  as  the  whole 
story  of  a  saint's  life  had  been  shown  in  a  miracle- 
play.  Altho  the  subjects  were  no  longer  religious 
and  altho  the  performers  had  no  longer  any  con- 
nection with  the  church,  or  even  with  the  gilds 
of  craftsmen  to  whom  the  church  had  yielded  the 
acting  of  the  mysteries,  the j)lays__performed  by 
the  strollers  were  novel  only  in  their  subjects;  — 
they  were  still  medieval  in  their  structure. 

But  as  these  wandering  performers  could  not 
avail  themselves  of  the  various  spectacular  devices 
which  were  so  helpful  in  retaining  the  interest  of 
the  medieval  spectator,  they  were  thus  forced  to 
lay  stress  especially  upon  those  incidents  of  the 
story  in  which  the  attention  of  the  audience  could 
be  aroused  by  sheer  force  of  acting.  The  sudden 
development  of  the  drama  in  this  period  is  due 
»94 


THE    DRAMA  IN   ENGLAND 

in  part  at  least  to  the  growth  of  a  class  of  profes- 
sional actors,  replacing  the  amateurs  of  the  gilds. 
These  professional  actors  would  soon  find  the 
placid  dialog  of  the  medieval  theater  unworthy 
of  their  growing  histrionic  ability ;  and  they  would 
not  long  be  content  unless  they  had  expressive 
characters  to  personate  and  absorbing  passions 
to  portray.  As  it  is  in  the  conflict  of  duty  and 
desire  that  actors  find  most  scope  for  the 
exhibition  of  their  powers,  any  increase  in  the 
technical  skill  of  the  performers  would  tend  at 
once  to  make  the  plays  written  for  them  more 
truly  dramatic. 

There  is  always  a  close  connection  between 
the  dramaturgic  art  and  the  histrionic.  (The  player 
is  ever  urging  the  playwright  to  provide  him  with 
the  opportunity  for  new  triumphs;  and  the  dra- 
matist can  ever  be  confident  that  the  actor  will 
loyally  do  all  he  can  to  express  whatever  hight 
of  emotion  the  situation  may  evoke\  One  reason 
why  the  medieval  drama  is  as  dull  as  it  is,  and 
as  uninteresting,  is  because  the  mysteries  were 
both  written  and  performed*  by  casual  amateurs, 
deprived  even  of  the  example  which  our  profes- 
sional authors  and  our  professional  actors  supply 
to  the  amateurs  of  to-day.  A  condition  precedent 
to  the  growth  of  a  living  dramatic  literature  is  the 
specialization  of  professional  playwrights  and  of 
professional  actors,  dependent  for  their  livelihood 
195 


THE   DRAMA   IN   ENGLAND 


on  their  mastery  of  their  art,  and  exercising  their 
craftsmanship  in  wholesome  rivalry  with  one 
another. 

HI 

In  England  j  when  Elizabeth  was  queen  the 
little  companies  of  wandering  actors  were  greatly 
increased  in  number.  They  had  placed  them- 
selves under  the  protection  of  rich  nobles  or  high 
officials,  whose  servants  they  declared  them- 
selves to  be.  Their  membership  was  as  limited 
as  their  repertory ;  and  four  or  five  players  were 
sufficient  to  produce  such  simple  pieces  as  were 
then  available,  each  of  the  performers  assuming 
more  than  one  character,  if  need  be, —  very  much 
as  all  the  parts  in  a  Greek  play  had  to  be  divided 
among  three  actors.  A  slim  youth  might  have 
to  impersonate  all  the  female  characters, — and 
here  the  English,  oddly  enough,  were  more 
medieval  than  the  Spanish,  who  had  already 
admitted  women  upon  the  stage.  ;They  carried 
no  scenery  with  them,  for  it  is  scarcely  too  much 
to  say  that  scenery  had  not  then  been  invented. 
They  took  with  them  only  the  most  obvious 
properties,  perhaps  a  crown  for  the  king  and  a 
couple  of  swords  for  a  combat,  and  the  like. 
They  wore  as  rich  apparel  as  they  could  get, 
with  no  thought  of  its  propriety  to  the  time  and 
place  of  the  play  itself  Thus  lightly  encum- 
196 


THE   DRAMA   IN  ENGLAND 

bered  they  could  rove  at  will,  ready  to-day  to 
amuse  the  guests  of  a  noble  gathered  in  the  great 
hall  of  the  castle,  and  prepared  to-morrow  to 
please  the  humbler  audience  that  might  come 
together  in  the  village. 

In  those  days  the  English  inn  was  often  a 
hollow  square,  with  a  central  courtyard  girt 
with  galleries;  and  here,  with  the  permission  of 
the  innkeeper,  the  strollers  would  put  up  a  hasty 
platform  around  which  the  country-folk  might 
stand,  while  the  persons  of  quality  could  look 
down  from  the  galleries.  In  London  the  per- 
formances in  places  of  public  entertainment  drew 
such  concourses  of  people  that  the  city  authorities 
were  scandalized  and  strove  to  forbid  them ;  and 
as  a  result  the  players  —  who  had  been  wanderers 
hitherto  —  were  forced  to  build  houses  of  their 
own  just  outside  of  the  municipal  limits  and  to 
establish  themselves  permanently.  They  had  no 
models  to  go  by,  and  in  planning  their  theaters 
they  gave  no  thought  to  the  sumptuous  edifices 
that  had  adorned  the  chief  towns  of  Greece  and 
Rome.  They  were  used  to  performing  in  the 
courtyard  of  an  inn;  and  therefore  the  first 
theater  that  they  built  for  themselves  was  appa- 
rently no  more  and  no  less  than  the  courtyard  of 
an  inn  —  without  the  inn  itself. 

The  new  building  was  but  a  hollow  square  of 
about  eighty  feet  each  way,  open  to  the  sky  in 
197 


THE   DRAMA   IN   ENGLAND 

the  center,  and  consisting  of  little  more  than  a 
quadrangle  of  galleries,  to  be  divided  into  "rooms^ 
as  they  were  then  called,  private  boxes  as  we 
should  now  term  them,  for  the  accommodation  of 
the  more  particular  playgoers.  The  whole  ground 
floor  was  the  yard,  wherein  the  solid  body  of 
the  more  vulgar  spectators  had  to  stand;  and 
into  this  yard  there  was  thrust  out  the  stage,  a 
platform  perhaps  forty  feet  square.  Where  the  rear 
gallery  ran  across  the  stage  there  hung  an  arras, 
a  heavy  tapestry  curtain,  to  cut  off  the  space 
behind,  which  might  be  used  as  a  dressing-room. 
The  rear  gallery  itself,  just  over  the  platform,  was  ^ 
also  made  useful,  serving  as  a  balcony,  a  pulpit,  ^ 
a  roof,  or  whatever  upper  chamber  might  be 
called  for  in  the  progress  of  the  play.  The  stage 
was  so  spacious  that  some  of  the  spectators  were 
allowed  to  sit  to  the  right  and  to  the  left,  on 
stools  to  be  hired.  There  was  no  curtain  to  pull 
up  or  to  pull  aside ;  and  there  was  absolutely  no 
scenery  of  any  kind. 

The  simplicity  of  the  projecting  platform,  with 
its  pendent  arras  at  the  back  and  its  room  in  the 
gallery  above  available  on  occasion,  the  absence 
of  all  decoration,  leaving  the  space  between  the 
spectators  on  the  stage  to  represent  whatsoever 
strange  sequence  of  places  the  playwright  might 
need,  —  all  this  was  perfectly  acceptable  to  most  of 
the  uncritical  subjects  of  Elizabeth.  It  was  not 
198 


THE   DRAMA   IN   ENGLAND 

acceptable  to  the  critical  Sidney,  enamored  of 
antiquity  and  nourished  on  the  Italian  theorists. 
He  protested  against  a  stage  on  which  the  scene 
could  seem  to  change  continually  simply  because 
there  was  no  scenery  to  be  changed. 

Sidney  was  annoyed  that  "the  player  when 
he  comes  in,  must  ever  begin  with' telling  where 
he  is;  or  else  the  tale  will  not  be  conceived. 
Now  shall  you  have  three  ladies  walk  to  gather 
flowers,  and  then  we  must  believe  the  stage  to 
be  a  garden.  By  and  by,  we  hear  news  of  ship- 
wreck in  the  same  place;  then  we  are  to  blame 
if  we  accept  it  not  for  a  rock.  Upon  the  back  of 
that  comes  out  a  hideous  monster  with  fire  and 
smoke,  and  then  the  miserable  beholders  are 
bound  to  take  it  for  a  cave;  while,  in  the  mean- 
time, two  armies  fly  in,  represented  with  four 
swords  and  bucklers,  and  then  what  hard  heart 
will  not  receive  it  for  a  pitched  field."  Sidney's 
contemporaries  were  not  hard-hearted;  and  they 
were  ever  willing  to  accept  a  bare  stage  as  a 
battle-field  and  as  a  cave,  as  a  rock  and  as  a 
garden,  as  the  castle  of  Elsinore,  as  the  forest  of 
Arden  and  as  the  forum  of  Rome. 

As  sharp  as  Sidney's  protest  against  this  viola- 
tion of  the  alleged  Unity  of  Place  is  his  protest 
against  the  equally  flagrant  violation  of  the 
alleged  Unity  of  Time,  when  the  dramatist  un- 
hesitatingly shows  us  a  young  couple  courting, 
199 


THE   DRAMA   IN   ENGLAND 

and  then  married,  and  parents  of  children,  who 
grow  to  manhood,  and  who  are  ready  themselves 
to  court  and  to  marry,  "and  all  this  in  two  hours' 
space."  Here  again,  as  in  the  imaginary  changes 
of  scene,  we  see  in  the  Elizabethan  drama  the 
survival  of  the  tradition  of  the  middle  ages,  with 
the  miracle-play  ready  to  unroll  before  us  the 
long  panorama  of  a  saint's  existence.  And  it  is 
an  unfortunate  fact  that  the  form  of  the  Eliza- 
V  "  bethan  drama,  even  in  the  hands  of  its  master- 
spirits, is  often  neither  truly  ancient  in  its  direct- 
ness nor  really  modern  in  its  swiftness;  it  is 
medieval  rather  in  its  absence  of  restraint.  The 
form  was  in  fact  too  loose  and  too  flexible  to 
keep  those  who  made  use  of  it  up  to  a  high 
standard;  as  Huxley  pithily  put  it,  "a.  man's 
worst  difficulties  begin  when  he  is  able  to  do  as 
he  likes."  In  the  English  drama  we  cannot  but 
remark  a  certain  jerjuness  of  the  action  as  the 
place  jumps  from  one  countryTo~another,  only  to 
spring  back  again  as  suddenly;  and  we  cannot 
but  regret  a  certain  lumbering  looseness  of  struc- 
ture as  the  episodes  lazily  follow  one  another 
down  through  the  years.  The  sprawling  story 
of  '  A  Winter's  Tale '  is  far  more  characteristi- 
cally Elizabethan  than  the  artful  concentration  of 
'Othello'  and  'Macbeth.' 

But  the  playwrights  of  those  days,  like  the  play- 
wrights of  every  period  when  the  drama  has  had 


r 


THE   DRAMA   IN   ENGLAND 

a  vigorous  vitality,  were  intent  on  pleasing  the 
contemporary  playgoers,  and  they  wasted  no 
thought  in  vain  anticipation  of  the  critical  judg- 
ment of  posterity.  If  a  tragedy  or  a  comedy  won 
the  boisterous  approval  of  those  who  had  paid 
to  see  it,  the  dramatists  asked  no  more.  They 
lived  in  the  present;  and  they  were  in  a  hurry,  for 
the  demand  for  new  plays  far  exceeded  the  sup- 
ply. f^So  long  as  the  companies  of  actors  were 
strollers,  a  very  limited  repertory  had  sufficed, 
and  a  play  might  be  performed  again  and  again 
in  different  parts  of  the  island;  but  just  as  soon 
as  the  actors  were  established  in  London  perma- 
nently, then  there  was  need  of  novelty;  and  if 
the  theaters  were  to  be  kept  open,  a  constant 
succession  of  new  plays  was  imperative. 

The  acted  drama  was  scarcely  considered  as 
belonging  to  literature,— indeed,  it  was  held  in 
contempt  by  many  critics.  But  to  write  for  the 
theater  was  almost  the  only  means  whereby  a 
man-of-letters  could  make  a  living  —  unless  he 
chose  to  turn  actor  also.  So  it  is  that  we  see  the 
clever  young  fellows,  eager  to  push  their  fortunes, 
the  fledgling  poets,  the  scholars  just  out  of  the 
universities,  joining  themselves  to  the  players, 
some  of  them  becoming  actors,  but  most  of 
them  being  satisfied  merely  to  furnish  the  new 
plays  required  by  the  quick  rivalry  of  the  London 
playhouses.     They  plied  as  hacks,  doing  what- 

201 


THE   DRAMA   IN   ENGLAND 

ever  odd  jobs  they  were  asked  to  undertake,  now 
polishing  up  an  old  play,  then  dramatizing  a  tale 
from  the  latest  translation,  and  next  collaborating, 
two  or  three  of  them,  in  a  hasty  effort  to  build  a 
gruesome  tragedy  out  of  the  last  murder  that 
had  got  itself  sung  in  a  ballad.     Not  many  of 
these  prentice  play-makers  were  endowed  with 
the  dramaturgic  instinct,  but  the  few  who  had 
the  native  gift  soon  had  opportunity  and  practice 
to  attain  skill.     No  doubt  the  youthful  dramatists 
were  aided  also  by  the  practical  advice  of  the 
actors  themselves,  who  knew  what  they  wanted 
and  who  were  then  in  a  position  to  insist  on  get- 
^     y  vu^^"S  it.     In  England  under  Elizabeth  the  actors 
51^  «^  were  also  thejrianagers  of  the  theaters,  or  at 
\l^  ^     least  the  foremost  of  them  were  controllers  of 
the  enterprise  and  sharers  of  the  profits,  dividing 
the  best  parts    among   themselves   and   paying 
^    ..  wages  to  their  humbler  associates.  \  One  reason 

fyP^  for  the  extraordinary  productivity  of  the  drama 

just  then  may  be  found  in  this  fact,  that  the  man- 
agement of  the  several  playhouses  was  chiefly 
in  the  hands  of  the  actors ;  and  another  cause, 
even  more  obvious,  can  be  seen  in  the  sharp 
competition  between  the  several  playhouses. 

Within  a  short  time  after  the  opening  of  these 

theaters  just  outside  the  limits  of  London,  the 

needful   conditions    of  a   national   drama  were 

present.    There  were  the  playhouses  themselves, 

202 


THE   DRAMA    IN   ENGLAND 

primitive  indeed  according  to  our  notions,  but 
perfectly  satisfactory  to  those  who  attended 
them.  There  were  the  companies  of  actors, 
accomplished  in  their  art  and  ardent  for  fresh 
triumphs.  There  was  also  the  varying  popula- 
tion of  the  capital  to  supply  an  unending  succes- 
sion of  playgoers  of  all  classes,  nobles  and  gentry, 
students  from  the  universities,  townsfolk,  rustic 
visitors,  and  seafarers  just  home  from  perilous 
voyages.  The  English  people  were  never  more 
healthy  in  mind  and  in  body  than  they  were 
then,  never  more  adventurous  in  spirit,  never 
more  wilful  and  self-assertive.  These  character- 
istics are  favorable  for  the  growth  of  the  drama; 
and  these  characteristics  are  all  of  them  abun- 
dantly displayed  in  the  drama  that  soon  sprang 
up  luxuriantly. 

IV 

The  new  play-makers  were  men  of  far  more 
al5ility\than  the  unknown  writers  in  whose  foot- 
steps tney  were  following;  but  they  never  set 
themselves  up  as  innovators.  They  worked  in 
the  old  tradition  cheerfully,  trying  to  provide  the 
players  with  the  kind  of  play  that  they  knew  the 
playgoers  liked.  No  doubt  they  wished  to  bet- 
ter theiTcopy  if  they  could,  but  they  were  scarcely 
conscious  that  theywere  really  making  over  anew 
the  art  they  had  inherited  from  their  forgotten 
203 


THE  DRAMA   IN   ENGLAND 

predecessors.  Like  these  predecessors,  they  wrote 
especially  to  please  the  groundlings  who  stood  in 
the  yard,  but  they  sought  also  not  to  displease  the 
gallants  who  sat  on  the  stage.  They  were  better 
educated,  and  therefore  they  could  go  farther  afield, 
not  only  for  material,  but  also  for  effects.  From 
Seneca, —  whose  Latin  plays,  never  really  acted, 
altho  possibly  sometimes  recited,  were  the  earliest 
specimens  of  a  persistent  and  pestilent  type,  the 
so-called  "drama  for  the  closet,"  the  play  not 
intended  to  be  played  (an  obvious  contradiction 
in  terms),  —  from  the  Hispano-Roman  rhetorician, 
they  borrowed  the  practice  of  frequent  mur- 
der and  the  evocation  of  frequent  ghosts.  In 
their  heaping  up  of  horrors  they  were  probably 
encouraged  by  the  contemporary  popularity  of 
the  Italian  novelist,  with  his  constant  commin- 
gling of  lust  and  gore.  The  laxly  knit  chronicle- 
play  was  soon  stiffened  into  the  so-called 
tragedy-of-blood,  a  dramatic  form  which  w^s 
very  pleasing  to  the  Elizabethan  audiences  and 
which  was  tempting  even  to  Shakspere  himself.. 
While  a  true  tragedy  should  purge  the  soul 
with  terror,  the  trag£dy.-of-blood  was  satisfied  to 
thrill  the  nerves  with -horror".  A  necessary  figure 
in  the  conduct  of  such  a  play  was  a  ghost  who 
proclaimed  the  duty  of  revenge  and  who,  in 
anficipation,  gloated  over  every  bloqdy_^trDk«- 
"  _vengeance.  The  author  charmed  the  eyes  of 
204 


THE   DRAMA   IN   ENGLAND 

the  spectators  with  comj^s,  hangings^ tortures, 
dumb-shows,  and  masques,  while  also  he  ffcined 
the  ears  of  the  audience  with  vehement  phrases 
and  high-sounding  bombast.  And  yet,  however 
coarse  may  seem  the  art  of  this  tragedy-of- 
blood,  it  was  at  least  alive,  which  could  be  said 
of  very  few  of  the  miracle-plays.  As  it  dealt 
with  the  clash  of  passion  against  passion  it  was 
essentially  dramatic,  which  the  chronicle-plays 
at  first  were  not.  However  violent  the  crudities 
in  the  early  '  Spanish  Tragedy '  of  Kyd,  and  what- 
ever the  flagrant  faults  of  taste  and  structure  in 
the  later  '  Duchess  of  Malfi '  of  Webster,  there 
is  no  denying  the  vigor  of  these  plays  nor  their 
exceeding  vitality.  They  were  planned  to  be 
acted  then  and  with  no  thought  that  they  would 
ever  be  read  now.  They  were  devised  to^hit 
the  taste  of  the  London  playgoer  of  those  unset- 
tled days,  and  they  achieved  this  purpose  amply. 
In  so  doing  the  tragedy^of-blood  helped  and  has- 
tened the  coming  of  the  true  tragedy  which  was 
to  supersede  it. 

Thomas  Kyd  was  not  the  only  predecessor  of  ' 
Shakspere  by  whose  labors  the  great  dramatist* 
was  to  profit.  While  Kyd  was  showing  how  to 
knit  a  plot  and  how  to-heapup  situations  tempt-. 
ing  to  energetic  actors,  his  friend  Christopher 
Marlowe  was  helping  to  transform  the  shapeless 
chronicle-play.  If  in  '  Hamlet '  Shakspere  was 
205 


THE   DRAMA   IN   ENGLAND 

at  first  following  Kyd's  lead,  in  *  Richard  111 '  he 
was  treading  in  the  footprints  of  Marlowe.  Kyd 
is  the  more  dextrous  playwright,  no  doubt;  but 
Marlowe  is  the  more  gifted  poet,  with  a  deeper 
insight  into  human  motive.  >Marlowe  it  was  in 
whose  hands  blank  verse  revealed  itself  as  an  in- 
comparable instrument  for  the  dramatic  poet;  and 
Marlowe  it  was  who  showed  how  to  search  the 
soul  of  man  in  more  than  one  notable  passage  in 
more  than  one  of  his  pieces.  J 

But  his  best-known  play,  {Doctor  Faustus^l, 
proves  that  he  was  not  a  bornpTay-maker,  in- 
stinctively grasping  the  essential  struggle  and 
unfailingly  presenting  it  in  the  necessary  scenes. 
The  play  was  little  more  than  the  mere  slicing 
into  dialog  of  the  old  story-book ;  and  only  in  a 
chance  speech  here  and  there  did  Marlowe  appear 
to  apprehend  the  full  philosophic  value  of  the 
suggestive  theme  he  had  chosen  to  treat.  Now 
and  again  he  seemed  to  get  to  the  heart  of  the 
matter  and  to  voice  his  vision  with  unfailing  feli- 
city of  phrase;  but  for  the  most  part  he  was  con- 
tent to  make  a  use  of  the  supernatural  which  is 
not  unfairly  to  be  called  puerile,  just  as  the  comic 
passages  are  almost  childish.  Among  the  cha- 
racters were  the  Good  Angel  and  the  Evil  Angel 
and  the  Seveg_>S[rig.  "alTsurvivals  from  the  earlier 


moralities,  and  serving  to  show  how  close  the 

coTTTTection  was  between  the  medieval  drama  and 

206 


THE  DRAMA   IN   ENGLAND 

the  Elizabethan.  As  a  humorist  Marlowe  is  piti- 
ful; as  a  playwright  he  is  freq  uehtly  fp-p>)le ;  as  a 
creator  of  character  he  i^_gften  deficient;  .but  as  a 
poet  he  holds  his  own  with  the  be^t.  As  a  poet, 
indeed,  henTay^v^n ^oast  that  he  had  Shakspere 
for  a  pupilv  Justly  has  his  mighty  line  been 
praised  for  its  power  and  its  nobility,  for  its  deli- 
cacy and  its  exquisite  modulation. 

While  Marh&we  with  his  *  Edward  II '  was  set- 
ting a  model  for  the  splendid  series  of  Shakspere's 
histories,  and  while  Kyd  was  complicating  the 
ghastly  plot  of  the  *  Spanish  Tragedy,'  which 
was  to  serve  as  a  stepping-stone  to  the  great 
tragedies  of  Shakspere,^  other  young  spirits  were 
lighting  up  the  path  leading  to  the  realm  of  fan- 
t^SJL-Where  roma^ntic-comedv  best  could  flourish. 
In  the  medieval  drama  the  scenes  intended  to  be 
amqsing  weje  sometimes  truly  humorous,  with  a 
shrewd  homeliness  of  phrase  and  a  direct  realism 
of  character-drawing;  but  most  of  them  were 
trivial  ancTcoarse  and  dependent  for  their  imme- 
diate effectiveness  rather  upon  horse-pla^g  than 
upon  genuine  humor.  The  free  adaptations 
whichTater  scholars  had  made  from  the  Latin 
and  from  the  Italian  possessed  plots  more  artfully 
put  together;  and  sometimes  the  plays  had  ac- 
quired a  certain  simple  flavor  of  the  soil  to  which 
they  had  been  transplanted.  But  not  in  the 
boisterous  scenes  of  the  miracle-plays,  not  in  the 
207 


THE   DRAMA   IN   ENGLAND 

ingenious  imbroglios  of  the  Italian  or  of  the  Latin, 
was  there  any  worthy  model  for  a  truly  English 
comedy;  and  yet  in  the  earlier  attempts  at 
romantic-comedy  the  influence  of  all  three  of 
these  can  be  traced,  accompanied  by  a  large 
contribution  from  the  contemporary  English 
novel,  itself  derived  indirectly  from  the  pastoral- 
romance  of  the  Continent. 

The  comedies  of  John  Lyly,  *  Endymion  '  and 
its  fellows,  seem  to  us  to  have  literary  merit 
rather  than  dramaturgic  effectiveness.  They  ap- 
pear to  us  too  artificial  to  hit  the  taste  of  the 
town,  too  distended  with  labored  allusiveness; 
but  before  an  audience  of  courtiers  they  were 
performed  more  than  once  and  with  some  mea- 
sure of  approval.  In  these  contemporary  alle- 
gories ingenious  equivoke  brought  about  plea- 
santly playful  situation,  characters  were  sketched 
lightly  yet  with  piquancy  and  freshness.  The 
dialog  with  all  its  insistent  antithesis  was  often 
witty  —  altho  not  quite  so  often  as  the  author 
labored  to  make  it.  There  was  a  gentle  sugges- 
tion of  gracious  courtliness  in  the  atmosphere  of 
these  comedies  of  Lyly's  not  to  be  perceived  in 
any  earlier  plays  —  a  gracious  courtliness  which 
is  to  be  found  later  in  full  flower  in  *  As  You  Like 
It'  and  'Twelfth  Night.' 
'  In  its  main  theme  Robert  Greene's  '  Friar  Ba- 
con and  Friar  Bungay '  recalls  Marlowe's  *  Doc- 
208 


THE    DRAMA    IN   ENGLAND 

-r' 

tor  Faustus'  with  its  naif  handling  of  the  super- 
natural ;  but  the  underplot  sets  forth  a  story  of 
young  love  triumphant  over  circumstance;  and 
we  have  here  another  source  of  romantic-comedy ,Ji 
with  its  fresh  love-making  in  the  open  air,  as 
prettily  pastoral  as  one  could  wish,  tho  it  was 
also  only  doubtfully  dramatic.  Indeed,  even  in 
his  plays  Greene  revealed  himself  rather  as  a 
novelist,  with  a  graceful  lyric  note  of  his  own.  ^ 
None  the  less  he  had  advanced  a  step  beyond  the 
courtly  Lyly,  a  step  nearer  to  that  kingdom  of 
romance  which  was  to  call  itself  Verona  or  Illyria 
or  Bohemia,  a  desert  country  by  the  sea,  where 
exiled  dukes  were  to  roam  the  lonely  forest  and 
where  lovely  heroines  were  to  disguise  themselves 
as  lads.  '  In  his  treatment  of  English  rural  life, 
with  its  plain-spoken  and  free-handed  English 
foIkjHn  his  contrasting  of  fantasy  and  reality,  in 
his  cohimingling  of  quaintly  humorous  characters 
with  figures  of  pure  imagination,  Greene  is  a  pre- 
cursor of  Shakspere,^|to  be  held  in  remembrance 
not  so  much  for  what  he  actually  accomplished 
himself  as  for  what  he  prepared  and  made  pos- 
sible.!! 


Greene  and  Lyly,  Marlowe  and  Kyd,  had  all  of 
them  aided  the  advance  of  the  English  drama 
from  out  the  monotonous  formlessness  of  the 


209 


THE   DRAMA    IN   ENGLAND 

medieval  pieces;  and  they  had  all  striven  to  de- 
vise the  kind  of  play  most  likely  to  hit  the  taste 
of  the  Elizabethan  playgoer,  with  his  sturdy 
body,  his  free  spirit,  and  his  alert  mind.  TReh 
a  dramatist  more  gifted  than  any  of  the  four 
came  forward  to  profit  by  what  they  had  done. 
This  newcomer  was  no  theoretic  reformer;  he 
had  no  artistic  code_already  formulated;  he  was 
simply  a  practical  playwright  who  happened  also 
to  be  a  great  poet.  \Shakspere's  first  labors  were 
humble  enough,  merely  the  patching  of  oM^ieces, 
whereby  he  learned  the  secrets  of  thecraft./ 
Even  when  he  started  to  write  plays  of  his  own 
there  was  no  overt  effort  for  novelty.  He  began 
where  the  others  had  left  off,  as  might  have  been 
expected  from  a  capable  young  fellow  who  sought 
to  earn  his  daily  bread  by  preparing  plays  to  suit 
the  existing  conditions  of  the  theatrical  market, — 
plays  intended  first  to  tempt  the  actors  tb  perform 
them  and  then  to  tempt  the  spectators  to  applaud 
and  to  come  again  the  next  time  the  comedy  or 
the  tragedy  or  the  history  might  be  announced 
for  repetition. 

But  even  in  this  prentice  work  there  was  evi- 
dence that  the  young  hack-writer  had  an  individ- 
uality of  his  own.  Better  than  any  of  his  groping 
predecessors  could  he  use  situation,  to  reveal 
character  and  find  fit  expression  for  feeling  and 
for  thought  at  the  moment  of  crisis.  His  earliest 
210 


g> 


,         .THE   DRAMA   IN   ENGLAND 

plays  were  little  more  than  imitations;  and  in 
*  Love's  Labor's  Lost '  he  was  almost  as  artificial 
as  Lyly,  altho  he  was  at  once  closer  to  life  and 
far  cleverer.  *  Titus  Andronicus,'  wherein  horrors 
on  horrors'  head  accumulate,  was  simply  a  tra- 
gedy-of-blood  on  the  model  of  Kyd's  most  popu- 
lar play.  The  'Comedy  of  Errors'  was  only  a 
^ce  with  an  ingeniously  mechanical  plot,  and 
yet  redeemed  by  more  than  one  character  of  a 
true  humanity.  In  *  Richard  III '  the  disconnected 
episodes  of  a  history  were  artfully  knit  into  a 
certain  unity  by  the  incisive  presentation  of  the 
royal  villain.  In  few  of  these  earliest  plays  was 
there  any  hint  of  audacious  ambition; — indeed, 
all  that  the  author  was  aiming  at  was  a  chance 
to  earn  his  living  while  learning  his  trade.  He 
was  not  yet  sure  of  himself  or  of  his  audiences^ 
"Steeped  in  humor  and  fantasticality  up  to  its 
very  lipS;  the  Elizabethan  age,"  so  Matthew  Ar- 
nold tells  us,  "newly  arrived  at  the  free  use 
of  the  human  faculties  after  their  long  term  of 
bondage,  and  delighting  to  exercise  them  freely, 
suffers  from  its  own  extravagance  in  this  first 
exercise  of  them,  can  hardly  bring  itself  to  see  an 
object  quietly  or  to  describe  it  temperately." 
Shakspere  was  a  true  Elizabethan  and  he  had 
his  full  share  of  this  fantasticality  and  of  this 
intemperance.  These  characteristics  are  most 
paraded  in  the  earliest  plays,  but  they  are  not 

211 


THE   DRAMA   IN   ENGLAND 

absent  from  the  latest,  in  not  a  few  of  which  we 
cannot  but  note  a  careless  playfulness  at  times 
and  a  reluctance  to  be  bound  by  any  restraint 
that  irked  him.  The  austere  perfection  of  Sopho- 
cles was  not  his  ideal;  yet  when  he  chose  and 
when  the  theme  he  had  chanced  upon  happened 
to  arouse  all  his  powers,  he  revealed  the  posses- 
sion of  a  constructive  faculty  not  inferior  to  the 
great  Greek's.  When  his  interest  flagged,  as 
for  example  in  'All's  Well  that  Ends  Well,'  he 
might  let  his  story  loiter  as  languidly  as  it  was 
wont  to  do  in  the  old  chronicle-plays ;  or  when 
his  subject  might  be  unworthy  of  him,  as  hap- 
pened now  and  again,  notably  in  'Measure  for 
Measure,'  he  failed  to  exert  himself 

But  when  his  imagination  kindled  at  his  theme 
and  he  put  forth  all  his  strength,  it  was  with  un- 
erring certainty  that  he  pierced  to  the  center  of  the 
subject  and  that  he  presented  in  action  one  after 
another  the  needful  scenes, —  the  scenes  a  f aire. 
'Romeo  and  Juliet'  and  'Julius  Caesar,'  'Mac- 
beth'and  'Othello,' are  plotted  with  conscious 
art  and  consummate  skill.  They  are  each  of 
them  plays  of  a  wonderful  unity  of  construction. 
Each  has  a  marvelous  beauty  of  form,  being  ex- 
quisitely proportioned  as  a  whole  and  carefully 
wrought  in  all  its  parts. '  These  plays,  conceived 
for  performance  in  the  little  cockpit,  which  the 
Elizabethan  theater  was,  with  a  bare  platform 


THE   DRAMA   IN   ENGLAND 

projecting  into  the  yard,  with  no  scenery  and  no 
propriety  of  costume,  with  the  women's  cha- 
racters impersonated  by  shaven  boys,  with  the 
gallants  smoking  on  the  stage,  and  with  the 
groundlings  restless  in  the  yard, —  this  'Othello' 
and  this  *  Macbeth '  are  truly  as  architectonic  as 
the  stately  Attic  tragedies,  which  were  performed 
in  the  spacious  Theater  of  Dionysus  before  the 
cultivated  Greeks.  These  English  tragedies  have  / 
a  solid  simplicity  of  their  own^notGreek  indeed, 
but  of  a  kind  which  the  open-minded  Greek 
would  have  been  able  to  appreciate.  They  meet 
the  requirements  laid  down  by_j^xistotle^c[ujte  as 
well  as  the  best  plays  of  the  Athenian  tragic 
writers  —  altho  not  quite  in  the  same  wayr)  The 
Greek  perfection  has  been  defined  as  "fit  details, 
strictly  combined,  in  view  of  a  large  general  re- 
sult nobly  conceived  " ;  and  even  this  perfection 
Shakspere  attained  now  and  again.  He  attained 
it,  indeed,  whenever  he  took  the  trouble  to  do  his 
best.  He  attained  it  in  'Hamlet,'  which  is  out- 
wardly a  mere  tragedy-of-blood,  with  its  revenge 
and  its  ghost  and  its  final  massacre,  but  which  is 
inwardly  the  eternal  tragedy  of  the  human  soul 
at  war  with  inexorable  circumstance. 

The  absence  of  the  chorus  and  the  consequent 

removal  of  any  limitation  of  time  allowed  the 

English  dramatist  to  avoid  the  fixity  of  character 

imposed  upon  the  Greek,  who  could  deal  only 

213 


THE   DRAMA    IN   ENGLAND 

with  the  culmination  of  his  action.  1^  Shakspere 
achieved  almost  his  highest  triumph  in  the  reve- 
lation of  character  as  it  slowly  disintegrated  under 
stress  of  repeated  temptation.;  We  can  behold 
the  virus  of  ambition  working  in  Macbeth,  and 
we  are  made  witnesses  of  the  persistent  solicita- 
tion of  his  wife.  We  are  shown  how  the  poison 
of  jealousy  slowly  destroyed  the  nobility  of 
Othello's  nature.  The  conditions  of  the  Greek 
theater  made  it  impossible  for  Sophocles  to 
attempt  this;  and  he  had  no  time  allowed  him 
even  to  suggest  the  certain  change  in  the  cha- 
racter of  Oedipus  after  the  hideous  catastrophe. 

Here  at  least  the  later  poet  could  profit  by  his 
larger  liberty,  altho  the  absence  of  all  restriction 
permitted  him  the  unduly  distended  action  of 
*A  Winter's  Tale,'  and  the  slovenly  huddling 
together  of  incidents  in  *Cymbeline.'  Rarely 
indeed  does  even  the  foremost  of  the  English 
dramatists  take  the  trouble  to  seek  the  simplicity 
of  form  and  the  solidity  of  structure  which  even 
the  least  of  the  Greek  dramatists  was  ever  striv- 
ing for,  altho  without  always  achieving.  Here 
we  see  how  the  highly  trained  Athenian  audi- 
ences helped  to  hold  the  Greek  dramatic  poet  up  to 
a  lofty  standard;  whereas  the  London  audiences, 
eager  and  tumultuous  and  uncultivated,  exacted 
nothing  from  the  English  dramatic  poet,  except 
that  he  should  deal  with  life  directly  and  forcibly. 
214 


^ 


THE    DRAMA   IN   ENGLAND 


Shakspere  was  not  only  the  foremost  of  English 
dramatists :  he  was  also  a  practical  man  of  affairs, 
clear-headed  and  self-possessed;  and  it  is  not  to 
be  wondered  at  that  he  did  not  often  exert  him- 
self more  than  was  needful.  He  did  not  write 
his  plays  for  publication  and  for  posterity:  he 
wrote  them  to  be  acted  in  the  theater  in  which 
he  was  a  sharer;  and  for  the  most  part  he  seems 
to  have  been  satisfied  when  they  pleased  the 
playgoers  and  brought  in  large  audiences.  But 
he  was  also  a  great  artist,  with  the  great  artist's 
sensual  enjoyment  of  the  dextrous  exercise  of  his 
technical  skill ;  and  thus  it  was  that  from  time  to 
time  a  rich  theme  would  waken  his  ambition  to 
go  far  beyond  any  demands  of  the  Elizabethan 
spectators  and  to  work  out  an  imperishable 
masterpiece,  which  would  move  his  contempo- 
raries, no  doubt,  but  which  would  also  carry  a 
message  to  later  generations  —  a  message  his 
contemporaries  may  not  even  have  suspected. 

But  it  was  on  the  audience  of  his  own  day  that 
he  kept  his  eye  steadily ;  and  he  gave  them  what 
he  knew  they  relished,  the  coronations  and  pro- 
cessions and  stately  spectacled  they  were  amused 
by,  the  combats  and  battles  they  delighted  in, 
the  ghosts  and  the  witches  they  believed  in,  even 
if  he  himself  did  not.  (  He  had  imagination  be- 
yond other  men,  but  he  had  also  common  sense 
in  the  same  superlative  degree^  He  had  his  head 
215 


THE   DRAMA    IN   ENGLAND 

in  the  clouds  at  times,  but  he  always  kept  his  feet 
firm  on  the  ground.  An  idealist,  as  a  poet  must 
be,  he  was  a  realist,  as  a  successful  playwright 
always  is.  He  was  never  remote  or  unfriendly 
or  retiring;  indeed,  all  the  records  remind  us  that 
he  was  hearty  in  his  friendships  and  that  he  gave 
himself  freely  to  his  associates.  He  had  broad 
human  sympathy;  and,  altho  apparently  rather 
aristocratic  in  his  political  opinions,  he  could  fel- 
lowship with  common  men;  and  perhaps  this  is 
why  common  men  did  not  fail  to  understand  him 
then,  and  indeed  often  understand  him  now  bet- 
ter than  the  more  dainty  and  the  supersubtle. 

He  was  not  over-squeamish,  and  he  never 
shrank  from  plain  speech.  But  he  was  clean- 
minded  beyond  most  of  his  fellow-playwrights 
of  those  spacious  days ;  and  in  his  attitude  toward 
women  he  was  a  gentleman,  even  in  his  come- 
dies,— whereas  men  of  far  better  breeding,  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher,  for  example,  were  frequently 
dirty  in  thought  and  often  foul  in  phrase.  His 
manners  were  better  than  those  of  the  contem- 
porary men-of-letters,  and  so  also  were  his 
morals.  There  was  in  his  plays  no  silly  practice 
of  so-called  ** poetic  justice";  for  anything  so 
petty  Shakspere's  vision  was  too  broad  and  his 
insight  too  piercing.  But  neither  was  there  any 
paltering  with  the  law  of  life  nor  any  extenuation 
of  wrong-doing.  The  sinner  has  ever  to  pay  the 
216 


THE   DRAMA   IN  ENGLAND 

dread  reckoning  at  last,  even  tho  it  is  only  by 
himself  that  he  is  called  to  account.  [■  Shakspere's 
philosophy  was  sound  all  through,  and  so  was 
his  ethical  code,  even  tho  it  is  unformulated.  The 
moral  might  not  be  tagged  to  the  fable,  but  only 
the  wilfully  blind  could  fail  to  find  the  lesson. 
/  Shakspere  did  not  think  it  wise  to  crystallize  his 
^morals;  rather  were  they  held  in  solution,  to  be 
tasted  and  felt,  not  seen  or  measured. 

Perhaps  this  was  specially  evident  in  the  his- 
tories, that  grand  gallery  of  full-length  portraits, 
in  which  the  long  line  of  English  kings  step  one 
by  one  from  out  the  dull  annals  and  start  into  life, 
illumined  by  the  inner  light  of  imagination.  But 
it  was  evident  also  in  the  joyous  group  of  poetic 
comedies,  creations  of  airy  and  capricious  fantasy, 
in  which  the  poet  peopled  a  world  of  exquisite 
unreality  with  figures  of  eternal  truth  and  beauty. 
What  were  'As  You  Like  It'  and  'Twelfth  Night' 
but  pure  romances  shown  in  action  with  young 
lovers  wooing  wittily,  moved  rather  by  pretty 
sentiment  than  by  any  unplumbed  depth  of  pas- 
sion.^ Just  as  other  dramatists  had  relieved  a 
story  of  terror  with  scenes  of  lively  humor,  so 
Shakspere,  in  'Much  Ado  about  Nothing'  and  in 
the  'Merchant  of  Venice,'  sustained  the  comedy, 
which  was  his  chief  interest  here,  by  underplots 
so  serious  that  they  might  seem  almost  tragic. 
For  these  delightful  fantasies  we  have  no  other 
217 


THE   DRAMA   IN   ENGLAND 

term  than  comedy ;  and  yet  nothing  can  be  more 
remote  from  what  we  ordinarily  understand  by 
the  word.  "Romantic-comedy"  we  must  call 
it,  and  of  this  romantic-comedy  Shakspere  was 
the  undisputed  master.  Contemporary  life  is  the 
stuff  out  of  which  the  comedy-of-manners  is 
wrought;  and  to  contemporary  life  Shakspere 
seems  scarcely  to  have  given  a  thought.  The 
only  play  of  his  in  which  he  dealt  avowedly  with 
the  men  and  women  of  his  own  time  and  of  his 
own  country  was  the  *  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor,' 
which  was,  in  effect,  only  a  farce,  since  the  situ- 
ations of  the  story  fjp.t^^rrpined  the  characters. 
Yet  altho  Shakspere  gave  no  thought  to  con- 
T  temporary  life,  it  is  true  also  that  he  never  sought 
to  represent  anything  else.  He  was  no  historical 
novelist  to  attempt  the  impossible ;  and  the  lovers 
of  the  'Merchant  of  Venice,'  the  men  of  the 
watch  of  'Much  Ado  about  Nothing,'  the  mob 
of  *  Julius  1  Caesar,'  and  the  courtiers  of  'Hamlet,' 
are  all  of  them  English,  and  all  subjects  of  the 
Virgin  Queen.  They  were  first  of  all  human 
beings,  set  in  special  circdmstances  of  time  and 
place;  and  then  they  were  also  Elizabethans,  with 
all  the  vigor,  the  humor,  and  the  whim  of  the 
men  and  women  whom  Shakspere  knew  as  boy 
and  man  in  country  and  in  town.  Because 
Shakspere  neglected  the  comedy-of-manners, 
his  fellow-playwrights  could  not  climb  unaided 
to  the  lofty  level  of  high  comedy.  For  romantic- 
218 


THE   DRAMA    IN   ENGLAND 

comedy,  as  for  tragedy  and  for  history,  he  had 
set  a  pattern,  and  the  others  were  able  to  work  in 
accordance  therewith.  But  for  the  modern  com- 
edy-of-manners  men  hadto  wait  for  Moliere  to  sup- 
ply a  model  which  should  endure  for  centuries. 


VI 

Yet  the  foremost  of  Shakspere's  fellow-play- 
wrights was  also  a  master  of  the  comic.  Real- 
istic as  was  the  humor  of  Ben  Jonson,  and  some- 
times almost  sordid  in  its  details,  it  could  on 
occasion  rise  splendidly  on  the  wings  of  imagi- 
nation —  like  the  humor  of  Aristophanes,  of  Rab- 
elais, of  Mark  Twain,  all  of  them  interpretative 
realists.  Often,  indeed,  the  humor  of  Ben  Jonson 
strikes  us  m>w^-as_arhiti:ary--and  as  adamantine. 
The  characters  he  brought  forth  on  the  Eliza-  V 
bethan  stage  were  richly  realized  and  unforget- 
tably individualized;  but  they  were  freouently  as 
rigid  as  a  Greek  masque.  They  lacked  the  flexi- 
bility and  the  moderation  of  human  nature.  If 
the  comedy-of-manners  is  the  result  of  the  clash 
of  character  on  character,  the  comedy-of-humors 
is  rather  the  result  of  the  clash  of  caricature  on 
caricature.'  But  however  exaggerated  their  cha- 
racteristics,—  and  this  very  exaggeration  was  an 
integral  element  of  Ben  Jonson's  comic  power,  as 
it  was  also  of  Smollett's  and  Dickens's, -r-  the  per- 
sons of  his  plays  had  indisputable  vitality. 
219 


THE    DRAMA   IN   ENGLAND 

They  took  part  in  ja  plot  built  as  solidly  as  the 
Pyramids,  and  as  massively  planned.  ;  Coleridge 
was  right  in  likening  the  framework  of  the 
'Alchemist'  to  the  structure  of  the  'Oedipus,' 
for  Jonson's  comedy,  like  the  tragedy  of  Sopho- 
cles, had  a  beginning,  a  middle,  and  an  end;  and 
it  was  wholly  devoid  of  everything  which  did 
not  help  to  bring  about  the  ultimate  recoil  of  the 
intrigue.  There  was  conscious  art  here,  a  tech- 
nical mastery  of  which  the  stalwart  poet  was 
openly  proud.  And  proud  he  was  also  of  his 
scholarship,  of  the  immense  variety  of  his  infor- 
mation, of  the  load  of  learning  he  could  carry 
with  ease,  even  making  it  serviceable  in  his 
comedies.  In  his  tragedies  this  scholarship 
weighed  him  down  and  stiffened  his  muscles. 
In  his  more  serious  plays  he  was  less  felicitous 
and  less  fortunate  than  in  his  comic  dramas. 
His  tragedies  were  put  together  with  the  same 
integrity  of  workmanship;  but  they  seemed  to 
lack  something,  some  sweep  of  passion  to  stir 
the  blood,  or  some  touch  of  elemental  simplicity 
to  move  the  heart.  Jonson  knew  books  as  well 
as  any  of  his  contemporaries;  and  his  comedies 
proved  that  he  knew  men  also.  Women  he  did 
not  know  so  well, —  or  else,  like  other  broad 
humorists,  he  did  not  greatly  care  to  portray  their 
pettier  frailties. 

Women  are  more  important  in  the  plays  of 
220 


THE   DRAMA    IN   ENGLAND 

Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  poets  of  a  lighter  weight 
and  of  a  more  romantic  temperament^    Many  of 
their  pieces  can  scarcely  be  classed  as  comedies, 
since  they  contained  scenes  of  searching  emotion 
and  scenes  of  boisterous  humor,  often  so  loosely 
conjoined  that  there   is  no  saying  whether  the 
serious  or  the  comic  plot  is  the  more  important. 
In  more  than  one  of  their  dramas  it  would  be 
very  difficult  to  discover  any  real  unity  of  action. 
But  laxly  as  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  may  have 
put  their  plots  together,  they  had  not  a  little  dra-    ^ 
maturgic  dexterity.  (They  had  caught  the  knack  of  r 
story-telling  on  the  stage;  they  had  an  instinct   \ 
for  an  effective  situation ;  and  they  could  sketch 
a  daring  character  likely  to  take  with  the  spec- 
tators.    Altho  far  inferior  to  Ben  Jonson  in  comic  ^ 
force,  they  had  a  pleasant  sense  of  humor  and  a 
pretty  turn   of  wit.     They  rarely  rose  to  any 
hi^hLof  passion  or  even  of  pathos,  yet  they  had 
sentiment  at  least  and  lyric  grace/ 

They  could  be  courtly,  as  became  men  of  good 
breeding;  but  they  sometimes  sank  into  blatant  .:^ 
vulgarity  not  only  of  phrase  but  of  thought. 
Here  they  were  on  the  level  of  their  contempo- 
raries, a  level  to  which  Shakspere  rarely  de- 
scended. Perhaps  it  was  due  to  the  fact  that  all 
the  women's  parts  were  acted  by  young  men 
that  the  Elizabethan  playwrights  delighted  in  un- 
clean innuendo ;  and  yet  this  was  a  temptation  that 


THE   DRAMA   IN  ENGLAND 

Shakspere  rarely  felt  Shakspere's  women  are 
ever  womanly;  they  are  eternally  feminine;  and 
altho  not  without  a  frankness  no  longer  in  fash- 
ion, they  are  essentially  pure-minded.  But  if 
Shakspere  is  cleaner  than  his  contemporaries, 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher  are  not  worse  sinners 
than  the  other  playwrights,  the  most  of  whom 
were  ready  enough  to  pander  to  the  baser  por- 
tion of  the  Elizabethan  audience.  It  was  to  the 
better  element  of  this  Elizabethan  audience  that 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher  more  often  appealed. 
They  deserved  the  favor  that  they  received  by  a 
succession  of  lively  plays,  cleverly  calculated  to 
please  the  prevailing  taste,  plays  with  picturesque 
action,  with  abundant  fun,  with  ingenious  epi- 
sodes, and  with  occasional  scenes  of  genuine 
force. 

Other  playwrights  there  were  a-plenty  in  the 
later  days  of  Elizabeth  and  the  earlier  days  of 
James;  some  of  them  were  merely  poets,  who 
wrote  for  the  stage  because  the  theater  then 
offered  the  best  chance  of  self-expression,  and 
some  of  them  were  true  playwrights,  gifted  with 
a  genuine  dramaturgic  instinct.  Ford  and  Web- 
ster were  gloomy  souls  in  revolt,  combining  hor- 
rors wilfully;  they  were  poets  of  strange  power, 
rather  than  playwrights;  and  they  turned  to  the 
dramatic  form,  not  from  any  native  impulse,  but 
rather  because  the  demand  for  plays  coincided 


THE   DRAMA   IN   ENGLAND 

with  their  own  pecuniary  needs.  Heywood,  on 
the  other  hand,  was  a  born  play-maker,  and  his 
*  Woman  Killed  with  Kindness '  remains  a  jewel 
of  simple  pathos^  Mas&inger  was  another,  a 
master  of  flexible  blank  verse ;  and  in  his  power- 
ful comedy,  'A  New  Way  to  Pay  Old  Debts,' 
there  was  a  bold  etching  of  a  malevolent  charac- 
ter. Sir  Giles  Overreach,  so  actable  that  it  kept 
the  stage  for  more  than  two  centuries.  Middle- 
ton,  again,  and  Dekker  had  their  share  of  success, 
altho  much  of  their  humor  is  made  according  to 
the  accepted  stage-formula  of  the  Elizabethan 
theater.  Shirley  also,  the  latest  of  them  all,  had 
his  full  share  of  strength,  altho  he  lacked  sympa- 
thy and  tolerance,  and  altho  his  humor  is  with- 
Qut  ease  or  unction. 

'Genius  is  mainly  an  affair  of  energy,"  said 
Matthew  Arnold,  "and  poetry  is  mainly  an  affair 
of  genius."  /^Energy  the  Elizabethan  dramatic 
poets  had  in  superabundance;  and  what  they 
lacked,  many  of  them,  was  restraint  and  order 
and  harmony^  Shakspere  towered  above  them 
all  in  power,  in  genius,  in  poetry, —  and  also  in 
art,  in  self-control,  in  elevation  of  purpose,  and 
in  dramaturgic  craftsmanship.  And  they  and  he 
were  closely  akin ;  all  were  children  of  the  race  and 
of  the  time.  "There  are  the  same  characters  in 
their  dramas  as  in  Shakspere's,"  so  Taine  de- 
clared, "the  same  violent  and  terrible  characters, 
223 


THE   DRAMA   IN   ENGLAND 

the  same  murderous  and  unforeseen  occurrences, 
the  same  sudden  and  frenzied  passions,  the  same 
irregular,  capricious,  turgid,  magnificent  style, 
the  same  exquisite  poetic  feeling  for  rural  life  and 
landscape,  and  the  same  delicate,  tender,  affec- 
tionate ideals  of  woman." 


vn 

No  epoch  in  all  the  long  history  of  the  drama 
is  emblazoned  with  more  glorious  ^names,  not 
even  that  which  was  made  respondent  by 
Aeschylus,  Sophocles,  andx  Euripides,  by  Aristo- 
phanes and  Menander.  In  sheer  force,  even  the 
Greek  drama  might  be  held  inferior  to  the  Eng- 
lish, /where  the  Athenians  regained  their  supe- 
riority over  the  Elizabethans  was  in  art^^in  the 
coQsci^US-piUpose  held  steadily  until  its  accoror 

plishmgnt,  in  the  <tiibnrrlinatinn  nf  p^rts  tO  the 
whole,  in  the  <;nhHnmpr  of  individual  frp^dnm  tO 

a  larger  symmetry.  Some  of  Shakspere's  plays, 
But  only  too  few  of  them,  were  wrought  with 
consummate  care;  and  so  were  many  of  Ben 
Jonson's;  but  for  the  rest  whaf  is  often  most 
evident  now  is  the  waste  and  misdirection  of 
energy,  the  unwillingness  to  husband  genius, 
the  wilfulness  that  is  almost  freakishness. 

Behind  these  wantond^iects^was  a  medieval 
uncertainty  of  fonTTT^'and  here_was  the  chief 
cause  of  the  deficiencies  of  the  English  drama  at 

2X| 


THE    DRAMA    IN    ENGLAND 

the  moment  of  its  most  splendid  expansion.  Its 
form  was  inadequate,  largely  because  the  Eliza- 
bethan theater  had  advanced  so  little  beyond  the 
theater  of  the  middle  ages.  The  English  drama 
was  less  medieval  than  the  Spanish  drama,  which 
was  its  brilliant  contemporary;  for  it  had  freed 
its  spirit,  at  least,  and  it  had  an  open  mind  It 
had  even  been  aided  in  its  development  by  the 
influence  of  the  Greek  masters,  altho  mainly 
through  their  Roman  imitators  —  an  influence 
far  less  felt  in  Spain.  None  the  less  was  the 
presentation  of  a  play  of  Shakspere's  quite  as 
medieval  as  the  presentation  of  a  play  of  Lope  de 
Vega's;  it  was  almost  as  primitive  as  the  presen- 
tation of  a  mystery  just  before  the  Renascence. 
The  performance  took  place  on  a  mere  platform, 
in  the  open  air,  with  most  of  the  turbulent  spec- 
tators standing  on  three  sides;  and  the  large 
majority  of  these  spectators  were  likely  always 
to  be  men  of  low  breeding  and  of  coarse  tastes. 
Altho  a  dramaist  must  needs  appeal  to  the  plain 
people,  to  his  contemporaries  as  a  whole,  and 
not  to  any  upper  class  or  cultivated  caste  alone, 
yet  he  is  unfortunate  if  there  is  not  among  the 
spectators  enough  education  to  leaven  the  mass. 
It  was  a  misfortune  that  the  Elizabethan  theater 
was  so  rude  a  thing;  it  is  to  be  regretted  that 
public  opinion  allowed  the  dramatist  not  merely 
needful  liberty  of  form  but  also  unlimited  license 
of  structure;  and  it  was  doubly  unfortunate  that 
225 


THE    DRAMA   IN   ENGLAND 

the  audiences  could  bring  to  bear  no  restraining 
influence. 

In  the  past  three  centuries  the  theater  has  been 
greatly  modified;  and  the  circumstances  of  the 
playhouse  itself  have  so  materially  changed  that 
an  Elizabethan  play  is  now  almost^^s  remote 
from  us  as  an  Athenian^  No  one  oi  Shakspere's 
tragedies  or  comedtescan  be  acted  on  the  modern 
stage  without  a  thorough  readjustment  to  suit 
the  later  conditions  of  representation  —  a  readjust- 
ment which  is  sometimes  destructive  of  Shak- 
spere's artful  preparation  in  his  earlier  acts  for 
what  is  to  be  brought  about  in  the  later.  The 
'Oedipus  the  King'  of  Sophocles  is  now  occa- 
sionally acted  in  Paris,  just  as  the  'Hamlet'  of 
Shakspere  is  often  acted  in  London  and  in  New 
York;  and  so  straightforward  and  simple  is  the 
form  of  the  Greek  tragedy  that  the  rearrangement 
of  its  episodes  to  suit  the  exigencies  of  the  stage 
of  to-day  is  far  less  than  the  transposition  to 
which  the  English  tragedy  has  ID  be  subjected 
before  it  can  be  represented  in  our  theaters.  This 
is  one  reason  why  all  the  efforts  of  later  poets  to 
model  themselves  upon  Shakspere  have  resulted 
in  immediate  disaster.  His  form  they  could  imi- 
tate; and  often  his  form  is  careless  enough.  His 
genius  was  incommunicable, —  the  genius  which 
made  him  the  foremost  dramatist  of  all  time, 
equally  great  as  poet  and  as  playwright. 
226 


VII.     THE  DRAMA   IN   FRANCE 


WHEN  the  church  gave  up  to  the  laity  the 
control  of  the  mysteries,  and  the  vernacu- 
lar of  each  of  the  several  peoples  was  substituted 
for  the  uniform  speech  of  the  clergy,  then  there 
began  to  be  a  divergence  which  did  not  cease  until 
the  drama  in  each  of  the  modern  languages  was 
strikingly  representative  of  the  racial  character- 
istics of  those  who  spoke  that  tongue.  Indeed, 
there  is  no  art  in  which  national  traits  are  more 
clearly  revealed  than  in  the  drama, —  not  only  in 
what  is  said  aqd  done  on  the  stage,  but  also  in 
the  very  form  of  the  play  itself.' 
L  From  the  common  stock  of  the  mystery, 
universal  throughout  medieval  Europe^  Spain 
evolved  a  type  of  drama  quite  different  from  that 
evolved  in  England  during  the  same  centuries; 
and  the  Spanish  play  with  its  ingenious  sur- 
prises, and  the  English  play  with  its  energetic 
directness,  are  not  more  sharply  differentiated 
from  each  other  than  each  of  them  is  from  the 
227 


THE  DRAMA   IN   FRANCE 


\  French  play  with  its  decorous  reserve  and  its 

psychologic  subtlety-HtThe  French  followed  the 

bent  of  llieif  own    geniu$,  just  as  the  Spanish 

had  done,  and  the  English;  and  this(led  them  in 

/^  ]  time  to  a  drama  not  so  en^rggtic  as  the  English 

'  and  not  so  full  of  surprises  as  the  Spanish,  but 
surpassing  them  both  in  the  symmetry  of  its 
structure  and  in  the  logic  with  which  its  action 
was  conducted.  The  narrowness  of  formjwhich 
became  in  time  one  of  the  most  marked  peculi- 
arities of  the  French  drama  /was  no  doubt  due 
mainly  to  the  French  liking  for  restraint,  to  a 
hereditary  preference  for  rules  of  guidance;  but 
it  was  also  caused,  in  some  measure,  by  the  cir- 
cumstances of  the  evolution  of  tragedy  in  France 
out  of  the  miracle-play. 

When  the  mystery  was  turned  out  of  the 
French  churches,  it  erected  out  of  doors  and  in 
the  public  square  its  long  platform,  with  a  row 
of  mansions  at  the  back  to  suggest  the  more 
necessary  of  the  successive  places  where  the 
episodes  of  the  gospel-narrative  were  to  be 
shown  in  action.  In  Paris,  the  miracle-plays 
being  at  last  intrusted  to  the  control  of  the 
Brotherhood  of  the  Passion,  a  band  of  burghers 
united  for  this  special  purpose,  there  was  no 
change  in  the  method  of  representation  when 
the  performances  were  taken  indoors  once  more 
and  established  in  the  Hotel  de  Bourgogne. 
228 


THE    DRAMA   IN   FRANCE 

Just  as  the  earliest  English  theater  was  copied 
from  the  courtyard  of  an  inn,  because  the  stroll- 
ing actors  were  accustomed  to  that,  so  in  France, 
and  .for  a  like  reason,  the  earliest  theater  was 
modeled  on  a  tennis-court.  It  was  long  and 
narrow;  and  it  had  a  shallow  platform  at  one 
end.  This  stage  was  decorated  with  such  unre- 
lated mansions  as  the  play  might  require;  and 
its  limited  space  must  have  been  as  badly 
crowded  as  the  chancel  of  the  church  had  been 
when  the  original  stations  began  to  multiply  in 
number. 

\The  disadvantage  of  this  massing  of  many 
places  all  at  once  on  the  stage  would  be  greatly 
increased  when  the  well-known  Bible  story  and 
the  legends  of  the  saints,  almost  equally  familiar 
even  to  the  spectators  who  might  see  them  for 
the  first  time,  ceased  to  supply  the  sole  material 
for  the  anonymous  dramatists,  and  when  chron- 
icle-plays began  to  be  made  out  of  the^  semi- 
legendary  lives  of  heroes  and  out  of  the  wholly 
fictitious  romances 'Of  chivalry.^  A  throne  under 
a  canopy  was  enotigh  to  suggest  the  palace  of 
Herod,  if  the  playgoer  already  knew  that  such  a 
king  had  once  reigned ;  and  so  a  gate  in  a  wall 
would  serve  for  Jerusalem  if  the  audience  was 
already  aware  that  a  part  of  the  action  would 
take  place  in  that  city.  But  when  fictitious  he- 
roes- absolutely  unknown  to  the  public,  had  un- 
229 


THE   DRAMA   IN   FRANCE 

heard-of  adventures  in  wholly  imaginary  castles 
and  cities  and  forests,  and  when  these  unfamiliar 
castles  and  cities  and  forests  were  all  huddled  upon 
the  stage  at  once,  each  of  them  not  actually  rep- 
resented but  merely  hinted  at, —  a  tower  for 
the  castle,  a  gate  for  the  city,  a  tree  or  two  for 
the  forest^ —  then  was  chaos  come  again. 

It  was  (in  the  neutral  ground  surrounded  by 
these  emblems  of  various  places^  that  the  actors 
played  their  parts,  the  castle  or  the  city  or  the 
forest,  each  in  its  turn,  being  used  for  their 
entrances  upon  the  stage;  and  yet  it  seems  as 
if  these  shorthand  indications  of  the  several 
localities  would  be  more  likely  to  confuse  the 
spectator  than  to  aid  him  in  realizing  the  succes- 
sive scenes.  Awkward  as  this  arrangement 
may  have  been,  it  was  an  inheritance  from  the 
medieval  theater;  and  the  tradition  was  so  firmly 
rooted  that(this  composite  set  was  the  only  stage- 
setting  familiar  to  the  French  playwrights  until  the 
middle  of  the  seventeenth  century/,  Not  only  did 
the  earliest  of  French  dramatists.  Hardy,  conform 
to  it;  but  even  the  first  plays  of  Corneille  were 
conceived  in  accord  with  its  conditions. 

Only  the  more  serious  drama  was  thus  en- 
cumbered with  a  complicated  stage-setting. 
The  comic  drama  was  free  from  any  vain  effort 
of  this  sort;  its  action  took  place ^ in  the  neutral 
ground, — that  is  to  sayi  on  the  bare  stage,  with 


THE  DRAMA   IN   FRANCE 

only  a  curtain  at  the  back,  for  so  the  strolling 
players  had  been  accustomed  to  present  a  farce 
on  an  improvised  platform  in  the  market-place.) 
Even  during  the  Renascence' personal  and  politi-  J 2) 
cal  satires  got  themselves  acted  now  and  again ^i 
but  ^he  staple  of  the  humorous  stage  was  still 
the  larce  with  its  sturdy  fun  and  its  practical 
joking.  )  Not  a  little  of  the  national  ingenuity  in 
handling  a  situation  logically,  and  in  extracting 
from  it  the  utmost  of  its  theatrical  effect,  is  already 
revealed  by  these  early  comic  dramatists  of 
France,  unknown  for  the  most  part,  writing 
directly  for  the  common  people, ( often  vulgar,  V 
never  squeamish,  and  liberal  of  Gallic  salt  rather 
than  of  Attic  wit.  Comedy  of  a  high  elevation 
the  French  were  to  wait  for,  till  their  native  stock 
had  been  cross-fertilized  by  Spanish  example. 
For  many  years  after  the  Renascence  had  brought 
about  a  new  birth  of  the  other  arts  in  France, 
^the  drama^  serious  as  well  as  comic,  did  not  re- 
spond to  its  influence,  and  remained  medieval 
both  in  its  manner  and  in  its  matter.  / 

In  these  days  of  dawning  promise,  (the  French 
men-of-letters,  like  the  Italian  men-of-letters  a 
little  earlier,  detested  the  medieval  theater  and 
despised  it.  (They  admired  antiquity;  and  they 
sought  to  imitate  the  dramatists  of  Athens  and  of 
Rome,  altho  they  really  preferred  Seneca  to 
Sophocles.  They  persuaded  themselves  that  one 
231 


THE    DRAMA    IN    FRANCE 

of  their  number  had  written  a  play  when  he 
had  merely  prepared  a  poem  in  dialog,  often 
protracted  by  the  needless  introduction  of  a  cho- 
rus in  the  manner  of  the  Greeks.  But/no  one 
of  these  French  men-of-letters,  whatever  his 
value  as  a  poet,  was  in  fact  a  playwright  ;  and 
in  these  poems  in  dialog  there  was  little  or  no- 
thing of  the  truly  dramatic.  There  were  no 
contending  passions,  no  character  in  the  fell 
clutch  of  fate,  no  struggle  firmly  set  forth,  no 
scene  a  faire.  Declamation  there  was  in  abun- 
dance—words, words,  words;  and  indeed  what 
plot  there  might  be  served  chiefly  to  bring  in  a 
variety  of  topics  for  rhetorical  treatment  or  for 
lyrical  expansion.  A  monolog  sometimes  filled 
almost  a  whole  act;  and  the  personages  did  not 
converse  together, —  they  delivered  lectures  to 
one  another. 

In  these  frigid  specimens  of  oratorical  verse  there 
was  neither  character  nor  action  to  reward  the  ef- 
fort of  professional  actors;  and  this  is  an  added 
reason  why  they  were  performed  only  by  ama- 
teurs, by  the  poets  themselves  and  their  com- 
rades, before  audiences  of  their  friends  and 
admirers.  These  chilly  imitations  have  a  cer- 
tain importance  in  the  history  of  French  litera- 
ture; but  they  are  quite  insignificant  in  the 
history  of  the  French  drama.  Mere  poems  in 
dialog,  presented  by  amateurs  before  dilettants 
2y% 


THE  DRAMA   IN   FRANCE 

on  chance  occasion^  could  have  little  influence  V 
upon  the  actual  theater  of  the  time^  and  it  is 
only  in  the  actual  theater  of  the  time,  however 
primitive  and  rude  it  may  be,  that  any  advance 
in  dramaturgic  art  can  be  made.  The  develop- 
ment of  a  dramatic  literature  is  alv^ays  dependent 
upon  an  already  existing  organization  of  players 
in  a  playhouse  with  playgoers  accustomed  to  a 
certain  traditional  way  of  presenting  plays.  Just 
as  the  practice  of  building  houses  of  some  sort 
necessarily  goes  before  any  growth  in  the  art  of 
architecture,  so  an  actual  theater  is  a  condition 
precedent  to  a  living  dramatic  literature. 

No  improvement  of  the  drama,  no  refining  of 
its  art,  has  ever  been  accomplished  by  a  poet, 
however  gifted,  who  scorned  the  actual  theater 
of  his  own  time  and  failed  to  master  its  methods. 
Improvements  are  wrought  only  by  those  who 
are  intimate  with  all  the  conditions  of  the  object 
to  be  perfected.  But  pressure  from  the  outside 
has  often  been  beneficial  to  the  theater;  and  by 
merely  literary  criticism  the  professional  play- 
wright has  sometimes  been  stimulated  to  a 
loftier  ambition.  Perhaps  the  professional  play- 
wright may  even  have  found  his  profit  in  a 
study  of  the  alleged  plays  in  which  the  poets 
failed  to  carry  out  adequately  the  ideas  they  ad- 
vocated. And  this  is  what  seems  to  have  hap-  -^ 
pened  in  France  toward  the  end  of  the  sixteenth 
233 


THE   DRAMA   IN   FRANCE 

century,  when  the  Brotherhood  of  the  Passion 
leased  their  theater  in  Paris  to  a  company  of  profes- 
sional actors  who  had  been  performing  in  the 
provinces  in  plays  written  for  them  by  their 
own  hack-dramatist.  Hardy. 


The  Parisian  playgoers  were  accustomed  to 
the  long-drawn  action  and  to  the  plain-spoken 
humor  of  the  miracle-plays  and  of  the  drama- 
tized romances  devised  according  to  the  same 
formula.  Hardy  accepted  this  formula  fully, 
composing  his  plays  to  suit  a  stage  decorated 
with  as  many  mansions  as  his  story  might  call 
for.  But  he  was  a  born  playwright;  and  he  had 
learned  by  long  experience  in  the  provinces  how 
to  hold  the  interest  of  an  audience.  He  had  more 
of  the  dramaturgic  faculty  than  any  of  his  prede- 
cessors, the  most  of  whom,  indeed,  had  had  very 
little.  In  his  hands  the  loose  chronicle-play  was 
stiffened  into  consistency  and  its  action  was  con- 
centrated to  bring  out  more  boldly  the  dramatic 
passages  in  which  the  actors  who  employed  him 
could  most  forcibly  display  their  ability.  He 
could  evoke  character  out  of  situation,  altho,  for 
the  most  part,  his  psychology  was  but  sum- 
mary. For  situation  itself  he  had  an  instinctive 
feeling  like  that  of  his  English  contemporary 
234 


THE   DRAMA   IN   FRANCE 

Kyd ;  but  he  lacked  Kyd's  rhetorical  fervor.     He 
was  not  a  poet  himself,  yet  he  was  prompt  to 
profit  by  what  the  poets  had  written,  both  by 
their  precepts  and   their    practice.      Like   Kyd 
again,  he  put  his  plays  in  five  acts,  in  accordance    ^ 
with  the  example  of  Seneca  and  the  advice  of 
Horace.     He  was  led  in  time  to;  devise  the  spe- 
cies of  play  which  came  to  be  known  as  tragi- 
comedy and  which  kept  its  popularity  through 
the  first  half  of  the  seventeenth  century. 
/This  tragi-comedy  of  Hardy's  served  as  the  i 
connecting-link  between  the  medieval  drama  and  \  V 

the  true  tragedy  which  was  later  to  be  illustrated 
in  France  by  Corneille  and  Racine."  This  true 
tragedy  was  slowly  evolved  out  of  tragi-comedy, 
as  tragi-comedy  had  been  slowly  evolved  out  of 
the  chronicle-play.  Hardy  availed  himself  of  the 
rimed  alexandrines,  which  he  had  found  in  the 
unactable  plays  of  the  poets,  who  had  vainly  es- 
sayed to  revive  the  classic  drama,  —just  as  Kyd 
and  Marlowe  had  accepted  the  unrimed  iambic 
pentameter  of  *  Gorboduc ' ;  and  thus  Hardy 
helped  to  establish  the  rimed  alexandrine  as  the 
verse  to  be  employed  thereafter  by  French  dra- 
matic poets.  Hardy's  own  poetry  deserved  no 
high  praise;  but  it  was  more  pretentious  than 
any  yet  spoken  in  the  actual  theater.  [  His  plays  \|. 
appeared  to  have  a  certain  literary  flavor  because 
he  drew  freely  upon  the  ancients  for  his  plots, 

235 


THE   DRAMA   IN   FRANCE 

upon  Vergil,  for  example,  and  more  particularly 
upon  Plutarch;  and  this  may  have  made  some 
of  his  pieces  seem  almost  classic,  in  spite  of  the 
fact  that  his  treatment  of  these  stories  was  frankly 
contemporary.  | 

it  was  probably  due  to  Hardy  that  people  of 
culture  became  interested  in  the  drama  of  the  day, 
and  that  men-of-letters  started  to  write  for  the 
actual  theater!  accepting  its  conditions  unhesitat- 
ingly, and  striving  to  give  it  a  more  literary  atmo- 
sphere. More  than  one  court-poet  ventured  to 
prepare  plays  to  be  acted  by  the  company  of  the 
Hotel  de  Bourgogne;  and  the  upper  circles  of  so- 
ciety were  led  to  attend  the  performances,  altho 
until  then  ladies  had  absented  themselves  from 
the  theater,  in  consequence  of  the  coarseness  and 
the  vulgarity  of  the  customary  entertainment. 
The  frequent  presence  of  women  of  rank  in  the 
playhouse  helped  along  the  purifying  of  the  con- 
temporary drama  in  which  the  younger  poets 
were  engaged.  Society  was  settling  down  after 
long  years  filled  with  feuds  and  factional  in- 
trigues; and,  with  stability  and  peace,  manners 
were  softened  and  taste  was  improved.  The 
theater  began  to  be  recognized  as  an  important 
element  of  social  life  even  before  Richelieu  took 
it  under  his  high  protection,  ambitious  himself  to 
win  acceptance  as  a  dramatist.  In  time  a  second 
playhouse  was  opened  in  the  Marais;  and  the 
536 


THE   DRAMA    IN    FRANCE 

actors  who  managed  this  were  eager  to  wel- 
come any  novelty  which  would  aid  them  in  their 
rivalry  with  the  older  company. 

To  supply  these  two  playhouses  there  sprang 
up  a  generation  of  dramatic  poets,  following  in 
the  footsteps  of  Hardy,  altho  they  possessed  less 
of  the  native  play-making  gift.  They  were  more 
declamatory  than  he  had  been,  and  not  so  direct; 
they  were  more  affected  in  the  conduct  of  their  sto- 
ries and  in  the  suggestion  of  the  motives  of  their 
characters.  No  one  of  them  equaled  Hardy  in 
sturdy  common  sense  or  in  ingenious  construc- 
tion. (  And  while  he  had  invented  his  plays  him- 
self, making  use,,  of  materials  supplied  by  epic 
and  by  history,  ^hey  began  to  borrow  their  plots  ^ 
ready-made  from  the  dramatists  of  Spain  and 
Italy.  At  the  same  time  they  imported  also  the 
so-called  ''rules  of  the  theater,'/ which  had  been 
elaborated  in  Italy  by  the  critics  of  the  Rena- 
scence, and  which  had  been  rejected  by  the 
practical  playwrights  of  Spain  and  England.  /^In 
France  these  rules  met  with  a  different  fortune ; 
they  slowly  established  themselves  in  the  literary  n^ 
drama;  and  they  shackled  the  French  stage  until 
early  in  the  nineteenth  century. 
/  In  Spain  and  in  England  the  playwright  had 
seen  no  advantage  in  fastening  these  fetters  on 
his  limbs;  and  in  neither  country  did  the  play- 
goers puzzle  themselves  about  any  theory  of  art 
237 


THE  DRAMA   IN   FRANCE 

or  any  code  of  rules  so  long  as  the  playwright 
was  able  to  hold  their  interest,  to  amuse  their 
eyes,  and  to  startle  their  nerves.  They  made 
no  cavil  at  any  license  the  dramatist  might  take,  so 
long  as  he  gave  them  the  special  pleasure  which 
they  expected  from  the  theater.  It  is  a  neces- 
sary condition  of  this  enjoyment  in  the  play- 
house that  the  spectators  shall  understand  at 
all  times  what  is  shown  before  them  on  the 
stage;  and  here  we  have  an  explanation  of  the 
apparent  anomaly  that  the  Three  Unities  were 
welcomed  by  the  play-going  public  of  Paris,  altho 
the  play-going  public  of  Madrid  and  of  London 
had  been  wholly  indifferent.  In  Paris  the  adopt- 
ing of  the  Unity  of  Place  would  abolish  the  clut- 
ter of  incongruous  mansions  which  the  stage  of 
the  Hotel  de  Bourgogne  had  taken  over  from  the 
outdoor  platform  of  the  miracle-plays.  These 
mansions  must  have  been  difficult  to  distinguish 
one  from  the  other  on  the  dimly  lighted  stage; 
and,  so  far  from  aiding  the  imagination  of  the 
audience,  they  may  have  kept  the  attention  dis- 
tracted during  the  earlier  passages  of  the  play. 

How  confusing  this  medieval  scenic  device^ 
might  be  may  be  guessed  when  we  learn  that  in 
one  play  of  Hardy's  the  stage  was  set  with  a 
palace  at  the  back  ;  while  on  one  side  there  was 
the  sea,  with  a  ship  having  masts,  on  which  a 
woman  appeared,  and  from  which  she  threw 
238 


THE  DRAMA   IN  FRANCE 

herself  into  the  water;  and  on  the  other  side 
there  was  a  fine  room  having  in  it  a  bed  decked 
with  its  sheets.  Almost  as  complicated  was  the 
stage-setting  requisite  for  one  of  the  early  plays 
of  Corneille,  the  *  Illusion  Comique,'  where  a 
richly  decorated  palace  was  in  the  center,  with 
a  park  on  one  hand,  and  on  the  other  a  cave  for  a 
magician  on  the  top  of  a  mountain.  It  is  small 
wonder  that  the  audience  would  welcome  a  sim- 
plification of  such  a  stage-setting  as  this,  and 
would  gladly  advocate  any  theory  the  application 
of  which  would  result  in  getting  rid  of  a  com- 
plexity so  bewildering. 

/  Also  to  be  allowed  full  weight  is  the  fact  that 
the  French  are  not  so  individual  as  the  Spaniards, 
nor  so  self-willed  as  the  English.  Rather  are 
they  governed  by  the  social  instinct,  relishing 
strict  order,  not  to  say  restraint.  Inheritors  of 
the  Latin  tradition  of  decorum,  the  French  do  not 
dislike  rules,  nor  do  they  really  object  to  what 
might  seem  to  the  English  to  be  restrictions. 
Above  all  are  they  fond  of  logic,  and  of  the  sim- 
plicity which  comes  of  having  a  single  aim ;  and 
so  far  as  the  acceptance  of  the  rules  of  the  thea- 
ter and  the  adoption  of  the  Three  Unities  helped 
their  playwrights  to  attain  this  end,  it  was  bene- 
ficial to  their  dramatic  literature.  But  if  we  may 
judge  by  the  history  of  the  theater  elsewhere,  we 
can  be  certain  that  the  French  play-going  public 
239 


THE    DRAMA    IN   FRANCE 


1 


would  never  have  approved  of  the  demand  of  the 
literary  critics  for  the  Three  Unities,  if  the  under- 
lying principle  of  the  rules  had  not  been  accept- 
able to  the  genius  of  the  race. 


Ill 

CoRNEiLLE,  the  first  of  French  dramatic  poets, 
possessed  his  full  share  of  this  national  character- 
istic; and  he  displayed  it  plainly  in  the  earliest 
of  his  more  important  plays— in  the  *  Cid,'  which 
was  derived  from  a  Spanish  drama  written  by 
one  of  the  followers  of  Lope  de  Vega.  Hardy 
had  already  shown  him  the  way  of  condensing 
the  ordinary  medieval  narrative  in  dialog  into  a 
succession  of  striking  adventures ;  and  Corneille 
in  turn  concentrated  all  his  effort  on  a  single 
main  situation,  the  very  climax  of  a  struggle  be- 
tween desire  and  duty.  Hp  cut  out  :of  his  Span- 
ish original,  and  cast  away^  all  that  did  not  serve 
to  throw  into  higher  relief  this  final  exercise  of 
the  human  will,  always  the  dominating  element 
of  a  true  drama;  and  thus  it  was  that  he  fixed 
once  for  all  the  form  and  the  content  of  French 
tragedy. 

The  popularity  of  the  '  Cid '  with   the   play- 
goers of  France  was  immediate;  and  it  has  been 
enduring.      No   tragedy   is    more   attractive   in 
Paris  to-day  after  almost  three  centuries;  and  in 
240 


THE   DRAMA   IN    FRANCE 

the  first  flush  of  its  novelty  the  rush  to  see  it  was 
so  insistent  that(  seats  were  set  upon  the  stage.  ' 
The  custom  thus  introduced  into  France  was  al- 
ready established  in  England ;  and  it  must  have 
increased  the  tendency  toward  scenic  simplicity,  'n 
since  the  sides  of  the  stage  were  not  thereafter 
serviceable.  Yet  the  '  Cid '  itself  had  been  de- 
vised in  accord  with  the  conditions  prevailing  at 
the  time  it  was  written ;  arid  when  it  was  origi- 
nally produced  at  the  theater  in  the  Marais  the 
stage  was  arranged  to  represent  simultaneously 
the  dwelling  of  Chimene,  the  apartment  of  the 
Infanta,  a  public  square,  and  the  council-chamber 
of  the  King.  Half  a  century  later  this  cumbrous 
complication  had  disappeared,  and  the  play  was 
performed  in  a  room  with  four  doors,— that  is  to 
say,  in  a  neutral  ground,  perhaps  suggesting  the 
public  square,  but  having  immediate  access  to 
the  quarters  of  the  King,  of  the  Infanta,  and  of 
Chimene. 

Founded  on  a  loosely  constructed  Spanish  drama, 
and  written  to  suit  the  conditions  of  the  French 
theater  as  Hardy  had  modified  them,  the  *  Cid '  did 
not  exhibit  the  Three  Unities ;  and  for  this  derelic- 
tion it  was  censured  at  Richelieu's  command  by 
the  French  Academy,  which  he  had  founded  to  be 
the  custodian  and  the  controller  of  taste.  Corneille 
defended  himself  as  best  he  could;  and  in  his 
later  plays  he  sought  to  avoid  giving  to  the  parti- 
241 


THE  DRAMA  IN   FRANCE 

sans  of  the  Italian  theories  any  occasion  to  find 
fault  with  him.  The  final  establishment  of  the 
rules  was  really  due  to  Corneille's  avowed  adhe- 
sion to  them  and  to  his  obvious  effort  to  con- 
form. But  he  himself  was  never  at  ease  within 
the  limitations  which  he  had  felt  himself  forced 
to  accept.  They  irked  him  painfully;  they 
cramped  his  bold  spirit;  and  he  was  continually 
striving  to  argue  himself  out  of  them  or  to  inter- 
pret them  into  harmlessness.  Sometimes,  it  may 
be,  the  necessity  of  wrestling  with  the  difficulty 
helped  him  to  a  more  concise  and  a  more  vigor- 
ous expression;— the  history  of  every  art  abounds 
in  instances  of  an  obstacle  which  the  artist,  after 
trying  in  vain  to  get  around,  has  at  last  been  able 
to  use  as  a  stepping-stone  to  a  higher  achievement. 
Quite  possibly  this  was  the  case  with  his 
tragedy  of  'Horace,'  in  which  his  power  as  a 
dramatic  poet  is  displayed  amply  and  character- 
istically. The  theme  was  tempting  to  a  man  of 
his  temper;  it  was  the  conflict  between  family 
affection  and  fervid  patriotism.  The  play  was  as 
simple  in  plot  as  it  was  swift  in  action,  the  poet 
presenting  only  the  naked  climax,  stripped  of  all 
accessory  episodes.  In  this  directness  of  move- 
ment he  was  aided  by  his  submission  to  the  rules ; 
and  on  this  occasion  the  observation  of  the  Three 
Unities  called  for  no  sacrifice.  The  single  plot  is 
presented  at  its  culmination  in  a  single  day ;  and 
242 


THE   DRAMA    IN   FRANCE 

the  stage  represents  a  single  place,— a  room  in 
the  house  of  old  Horatius  in  Rome.  The  first 
act  begins  with  the  entrance  of  Sabina,  with  her 
friend  Julia;  Sabina  is  an  Alban;  and  Alba  is  at 
war  with  Rome.  She  is  at  once  the  sister  of  the 
three  Curiatii  and  the  wife  of  one  of  the  Horatii. 
She  declares  her  divided  feelings,  and  then  de- 
parts, after  Camilla  enters.  Camilla  is  a  Roman ; 
she  is  the  sister  of  the  three  Horatii ;  and  she  is  be- 
loved by  one  of  the  Curiatii.  She  has  been  to 
consult  an  oracle ;  and  she  has  been  told  that  the 
war  will  end  this  very  day,  and  that  she  and  her 
lover  will  then  be  united,  never  to  part.  Then 
the  Curiatius  she  loves  enters,  to  inform  her  of  a 
truce  and  of  a  proposal  to  leave  the  war  between 
the  two  cities  to  be  decided  by  a  combat  of  three 
champions  chosen  from  each  side.  Elated  by 
this  good  news,  they  depart,— and  the  leaving  of 
the  stage  without  any  actors  was  taken  by  the 
audience  as  notice  that  the  act  was  ended.  As 
there  were  spectators  seated  at  the  sides  of  the 
stage,  it  is  probable  that  no  curtain  was  lowered. 
The  second  act  opens  with  the  entrance  of 
Curiatius  and  Horatius,  and  the  former  congratu- 
lates the  latter  that  the  three  Horatii  have  been 
chosen  as  the  Roman  champions.  Then  a  friend 
appears  to  announce  that  the  Albans  have  named 
the  three  Curiatii  to  defend  their  cause.  Horror- 
stricken  as  they  are,  the  young  men  do  not 
243 


THE   DRAMA   IN   FRANCE 

shrink  from  the  deadly  duty,  altho  Camilla  comes 
on  to  beg  her  lover  to  withdraw  as  best  he  can. 
Soon  Sabina  appears  to  urge  her  brother  not  to 
flinch,  even  tho  his  hand  is  armed  against  her 
husband's  life.  Finally  the  father  of  the  Horatii 
steps  forward  to  reveal  himself  also  as  a  model 
of  noble  austerity.  He  has  the  last  word,  bidding 
the  young  men  do  their  duty  and  leave  the  rest 
to  the  gods.  In  the  third  act  we  are  made  sym- 
pathizers with  the  suspense  in  the  Roman  house- 
hold while  the  brothers  are  fighting  three  against 
three  in  front  of  the  hostile  armies.  Sabina 
wishes  for  the  success  of  her  brothers,  while  Ca- 
milla is  ardent  for  the  triumph  of  her  lover.  The 
elder  Horatius  enters  to  attest  again  that  honoris 
ever  to  be  held  dearer  than  life;  and  when  Julia 
brings  the  dread  news  that  two  of  his  sons  have 
been  killed,  while  the  third  has  saved  himself  by 
flight,  the  father  grieves  not  at  the  deaths  of  the 
two  but  only  at  the  cowardice  of  the  one.  In 
the  fourth  act  the  old  man's  shame  is  turned  to 
pride  when  he  is  told  that  the  flight  of  his  sur- 
viving son  was  only  a  device  to  separate  the  three 
opponents,  whereby  the  Roman  was  able  to  face 
them  singly  and  to  slay  them  one  by  one.  Ca- 
milla hears  the  fatal  news  in  silence,  but  when 
her  brother  returns,  glorying  in  his  victory,  she 
breaks  forth  in  violent  imprecations  against 
Rome,  the  cause  of  her  lover's  death,— where- 
upon her  outraged  brother  pursues  her  off  the 
244 


THE   DRAMA   IN   FRANCE 

Stage  and  slays  her  with  the  sword  that  slew 
the  man  she  loved.  In  the  fifth  act  he  is  accused 
before  the  King;  and  it  is  her  father  who  justi- 
fies his  deed.  At  last  the  monarch  pardons  the 
murder  because  of  the  victory  that  went  before. 
The  dramatic  interest  of  *  Horace  '  is  as  indis- 
putable as  that  of  the  *Cid.'  Indeed,  we  have 
here  the  drama  reduced  to  its  essence,  the  stark 
assertion  of  the  human  will,  the  shock  of  con- 
tending passions,  the  collision  of  conflicting 
duties.  The  situation  at  the  center  of  the  story 
is  very  unusual,  not  to  say  most  extraordinary; 
and  this  is  one  reason  why  Corneille  liked  it. 
But  when  once  it  was  granted,  he  made  little 
further  demand  upon  the  indulgence  of  the  spec- 
tators; he  proceeded  to  handle  his  theme  with 
sober  logjc  and  to  extract  from  it  both  pity  and 
terror.  /Corneille's  characters  are  larger  than 
life;  thejrare  of  heroic  size,  all  of  them,  men  and 
women ;  and  they  breathe  a  rarer  air  than  every- 
day mortals.  But  they  are  consistent  with  them- 
selves and  with  one  another.  Their  exaltation 
of  sentiment  may  seem  to  some  of  us  a  little  too 
high-strung,  yet  it  was  to  them  perfectly  natural; 
and  to  the  French  audiences  of  the  seventeenth 
century  it  was  more  than  acceptable :  it  was  stim- 
ulating and  satisfying.  The  Parisian  playgoers 
thrilled  with  pleasure  then,  as  they  do  now,  when 
the  characters  vied  one  with  another  in  voi- 
cing noble  sentiments  always  perfectly  phrased. 
245 


THE   DRAMA   IN   FRANCE 

For  Corneille  was  no  jnere  playwright,  skilled 
in  building  up  a  plot:  (he  was  also  a  true  poetA' 
altho  very  unequal ;  and  he  was  a  passed  master 
of  versification.  His  lines  have  the  double  merit 
of  polish  and  vigor!  He  could  compact  the  ex- 
pression of  his  emotion  into  a  pregnant  word  or 
two;  or,  when  he  preferred,  he  could  express  it 
at  length  in  stately  and  sonorous  couplets,  over- 
emphatic  at  times,  no  doubt,  but  rarely  open  to 
the  reproach  of  pomposity. 


IV 

Racine,  who  followed  Corneille  as  Euripides 
followed  Sophocles,  took  over  the  form  of  tragedy 
which  the  elder  poet  had  marked  with  his  own 
image  and  superscription,  altho  the  younger  poet 
modified  it  in  some  slight  measure  to  suit  his 
own  powers  and  his  own  preferences.  Cor- 
neille had  been  over-lyric  at  times,  altho  he  had 
been  far  less  epic  than  any  of  his  predecessors  as 
a  playwright;  (Racine  was  more  rigorously  dra- 
matic. Accepting  the  limitation  imposed  by  the 
Three  Unities,  which  were  in  accord  with  his 
temperament,  Racine  condensed  still  further  the 
themes  he  treated.  He  focused  the  attention 
upon  fewer  figures;  and  he  simplified  again  the 
action  until  English  critics  are  wont  to  deem 
his  plays  bare  and  cold,  altho  in  fact  a  fire  of 
246 


THE   DRAMA   IN   FRANCE 

passion  is  ever  glowing  within  themi  He  was 
an  adept  in  construction ;(  and;  his  plots,  narrow  y 
as  they  may  be,  are  exquisitely  ^'proportioned,  re- 
vealing consummate  art  in  the  conduct  of  the 
story.  He  avoided  scrupulously  all  digressions 
and  underpIot$  and  parasitic  episodes. 

The  extraordinary  situations  that  Corneille  had 
been  delighted  to  discover  in  history,, Racine  re- 
jected altogether,  choosing  rather  to  deal  with 
what  was  less  extravagant, —  the  growth  of  a 
man's  love  for  a  woman  who  loved  another,  or 
the  consequences  of  a  woman's  mad  passion  for 
a  youth  who  cared  nothing  for  her.  In  his  plays, 
as  often  in  Corneille's,  the  action  is  internal  rather 
than  external^,  and  the  moral  debate  within  the 
heart  of  man  is  not  always  accompanied  by 
mere  physical  movement,  visible  to  the  heedless 
spectator,  j  Racine  did  not  seek  to  interest  the 
audience  in  what  his  characters  were  doing  be- 
fore its  eyes,  but  rather  in  what  these  charac- 
ters were  in  themselves,  and  in  what  they  were 
feeling  and  suffering^;  He  was  an  expert  play- 
wright, as  well  as  a  master  of  psychologic  analy- 
sis; and  this  is  why  he  was  able  to  accomplish 
the  difficult  feat  of  making  his  study  of  the  inner 
secrets  of  the  human  soul  effective  on  the  stage.  ^ 
His  story  might  be  slight,  but  in  his  hands  it  was 
always  sufficient  to  express  tensity  of  emotion 
and  to  command  abundant  sympathy. 
247 


THE   DRAMA   IN   FRANCE 

In  the  tragedy  of  *  Andromaque '  the  spectator 
is  made  to  see  how  Pyrrhus,  son  of  Achilles,  is 
about  to  abandon  his  promised  bride  Hermione, 
daughter  of  Helen,  because  he  is  desperately 
enamored  of  Andromache,  widow  of  Hector. 
On  behalf  of  the  Grecian  chiefs,  Orestes,  son  of 
Agamemnon,  appears  to  demand  of  Pyrrhus  the 
sacrifice  of  the  son  of  Hector  and  Andromache. 
Orestes  loves  Hermione,  who  loves  the  faithless 
Pyrrhus,  who  longs  for  Andromache,  who  is  de- 
voted to  her  husband's  memory.  To  save  her 
son,  Andromache  weds  Pyrrhus,  resolved  to 
slay  herself  as  soon  as  the  boy's  safety  is  assured. 
In  the  agony  of  her  jealousy,  Hermione  hints  to 
Orestes  that  she  will  be  his,  if  he  will  slay  Pyr- 
rhus before  the  wedding  with  Andromache. 
But  when  Pyrrhus  is  killed  and  Orestes  comes 
to  claim  his  reward,  Hermione  recoils  with  hor- 
ror and  reproaches  him  for  his  evil  deed;  and 
then  she  rushes  forth  to  put  an  end  to  her  own 
life  upon  the  bier  of  the  man  she  had  loved  in 
vain.  The  death-dealing  blows  are  never  given 
before  the  eyes  of  the  spectators;  and  yet  this 
artistic  reticence  results  in  no  loss  of  interest, 
since  the  attention  of  the  audience  is  directed, 
not  to  the  mere  doings  of  the  characters,  but  to 
the  effect  of  these  doings,  first  upon  Hermione 
and  then  on  Orestes. 

Racine's  conscious  possession  of  the  power  of 
248 


THE   DRAMA   IN   FRANCE 

arousing  and  retaining  the  interest  of  the  play- 
goers of  his  own  nation  in  his  minute  discrim- 
ination between  motives  and  emotions,  may  be 
one  of  the  reasons  why  he  was  prone  to  choose 
a  woman  as  the  central  figure  in  most  of  his 
plays;  and  here  again  is  a  point  of  resemblance 
to  Euripides.  /  Racine  was  led  also  to  make  use 
of  love  as  the  mainspring  of  his  action,  partly, 
perhaps,  because  the  passion  of  man  for  woman 
had  not  often  been  considered  by  Corneille, 
and  partly  because  this  was  of  all  the  passions 
the  one  he  himself  best  understood.  A  loving 
woman  Racine  could  always  delineate  with  deli- 
cate appreciation  and  with  illuminating  insight. 
His  touch  was  caressingly  feminine;  whereas  the 
tone  of  Corneille  was  not  only  manly  but  ever 
stalwartly  masculine.  Corneille,  argumentative 
as  he  was  at  times  and  even  declamatory,  was 
forever  striving  to  fortify  the  soul  of  man,  while 
Racine,  with  a  softer  suavity,  was  seeking  rather 
to  reveal  the  heart  of  woman,  to  lay  it  bare  be- 
fore us,  palpitating  at  the  very  crisis  of  passion. 
As  we  gaze  along  the  gallery  of  Racine's  fasci- 
nating heroines,  we  observe  that  desire  often 
conquers  duty;  but  when  we  call  the  roll  of 
Corneille's  heroes,  we  behold  men  curbing  their 
inclinations  and  strong  to  do  what  they  ought. 

Thus  it  may  be  that  Racine  was  the  nearer  to 
nature,  since  it  is  often  a  strain  upon  the  spectator 
249 


THE   DRAMA   IN   FRANCE 

to  climb  up  to  the  table-land  of  Corneille's  exal- 
tation. Racine's  language  also  was  more  familiar 
than  Corneille's,  easier,  homelier,  and  therefore 
less  open  to  the  accusation  of  being  stilted.  Not 
only  had  Corneille  a  lyric  fervor,  but  he  was  also  a 
maker  of  resonant  phrases ;  Racine  sought  rather 
to  be  simple,  and  rarely  strove  for  sententious- 
ness,  which  is  not  a  feminine  characteristic.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  younger  poet  had  a  gift  of 
pictorial  evocation;  and  his  verse  had  often  an 
insinuating  and  serpentine  grace.  It  was  admi- 
rably adjusted  to  the  organs  of  speech;  it  lent 
itself  to  delivery  on  the  stage:  and  yet  there 
were  few  purple  patches  in  Racine's  plays  and 
scarcely  a  bravura  passage  existing  for  its  own 
sake.  The  poetry  was  not  something  applied 
from  the  outside:  it  was  the  result  rather  of  a 
perfect  accord  between  the  sentiment  and  its  ex- 
pression. Racine's  melodious  verse  is  evidence 
that  French  is  not  so  un poetical  a  language  as 
those  have  said  who  cannot  feel  its  music  or  who 
dislike  its  nasal  tone. 

But  even  in  Racine's  hands  the  rimed  alexan- 
drine seems  to  us  distended  and  monotonous. 
As  a  dramatic  meter  it  is  inferior  to  the  dignified 
iambic  of  the  Greeks  and  to  our  own  varied 
blank-verse;  and  even  if  rime  is  really  needed  in 
a  language  as  unrhythmic  as  French,  it  cannot 
but  appear  artificial  to  those  who  happen  to  be 
250 


THE   DRAMA   IN    FRANCE 

unaccustomed  to  it.  This  impression  of  artifi- 
ciality is  deepened  by  Racine's  enforced  employ- 
ment of  the  conventional  vocabulary  of  gallantry 
to  express  sincere  and  genuine  emotion.  It  was 
the  misfortune  of  Corneille  also  that  he  had  to 
deal  with  the  universal  in  terms  of  the  particular, 
and  that  his  plays,  like  Racine's,  were  conditioned 
by  the  sophisticated  taste  of  the  playgoers  be- 
fore whom  they  were  performed.  If  we  contrast 
the  courtly  audiences  of  Racine  with  the  gather- 
ing of  Athenian  citizens  to  judge  a  drama  of 
Sophocles,  and  with  the  spectators  of  all  sorts 
thronging  to  applaud  the  plays  of  Shakspere, 
we  can  see  one  reason  why  French  tragedy  lacks 
the  depth  and  the  sweep  of  the  Greek,  and  why 
it  has  not  the  force  and  the  variety  of  the  Eng- 
lish. French  tragedy  appeared,  as  Taine  has  told 
us,  "when  a  noble  and  well-regulated  monarchy, 
under  Louis  XIV,  established  the  empire  of  de- 
corum, the  life  of  the  court,  the  pomp  and  circum- 
stance of  society,  and  the  elegant  domestic  phases 
of  aristocracy  " ;  and  French  tragedy  could  not  but 
disappear  **  when  the  social  rule  of  nobles  and  the 
manners  of  the  antechamber  were  abolished  by 
the  Revolution." 


If  the  manners  of  the  antechamber  were  the 
cause  of  the  self-consciousness  we  cannot  but 
251 


THE    DRAMA    IN    FRANCE 

remark  in  French  tragedy,  on  the  other  hand 
the  empire  of  decorum  was  a  government  under 
which  French  comedy  could  come  to  its  fullest 
perfection.  Moliere,  younger  than  Corneille  and 
older  than  Racine,  is  greater  than  either,  partly 
because  of  his  own  superior  genius  and  partly 
because  the  racial  characteristics  of  the  French 
can  find  their  fullest  expression  rather  in  comedy 
than  in  tragedy.  Indeed,  Moliere  is  not  only  the 
foremost  figure  in  all  French  literature :  he  is  also 
one  of  the  three  great  masters  of  the  drama, 
worthy  to  be  set  by  the  side  of  Sophocles  and 
of  Shakspere. 

Altho  Moliere  came  at  the  moment  of  matu- 
rity, when  the  methods  of  the  medieval  theater 
were  modified  finally  in  conformity  with  modern 
conditions,  it  was  only  very  slowly  that  he  at- 
tained to  a  complete  understanding  of  his  genius 
or  to  a  recognition  of  its  limitations.  He  was 
an  actor,  like  Shakspere,  and  the  manager  of  a 
company  of  comedians  who  had  wandered  for 
years  about  the  provinces  and  who  had  settled 
themselves  at  last  in  Paris.  His  earliest  attempts 
were  but  trifles,  brisk  and  broad,  in  the  manner 
of  the  Italian  comedy-of-masks,  mere  comic  im- 
broglios with  no  pretense  of  literature  to  sustain 
their  very  practical  joking.  Even  the  brilliantly 
written  comedy  of  the  *  Etourdi '  is  as  fantastic 
as  these  farces  of  the  Italians,  and  almost  as  me- 
252 


THE   DRAMA    IN   FRANCE 

chanical  in  the  ingenuity  of  its  expedients.  Not 
until  after  he  had  established  himself  in  Paris 
did  he  bring  out  the  '  Precieuses  Ridicules,'  in 
which  he  first  touched  the  real  life  of  his  own 
time.  It  was  only  a  comedietta,  but  it  was 
/based  on  a  solid  observation  of  his  contempora- 
ries; and  its  success  encouraged  him  to  seek 
subjects  in  the  society  he  saw  about  him.  This 
is  the  very  material  that  Shakspere  never  cared 
to  deal  with ;  and  Moliere  made  it  the  staple  of 
his  work. 

Altho  his  position  as  the  manager  of  a  com- 
pany of  actors  led  him  to  return  frequently  to 
the  Italian  formula  with  its  easy  extravagance 
and  its  liberality  of  laughter,  Moliere  slowly  en- 
larged his  manner  as  he  felt  his  footing  firmer. 
He  brought  forth  a  series  of  comedies  of  a  stea- 
dily increasing  depth;  and  as  he  became  more 
accustomed  to/  handling  the  realities  of  life,  his 
characters  were  more  boldly  drawn,  his  plots 
were  less  arbitrary,  and  his  themes  took  on  a 
profounder  meaning.  But  he  was  no  mere  man- 
of-letters  with  a  purely  theoretic  philosophy  of 
life:  he  was  a  practical  playwright,  master  of> 
all  the  resources  of  the  theater  of  his  own  time.y 
As  a  school-boy  he  had  studied  Latin  comedy, 
and  he  knew  all  that  Plautus  and  Terence  could 
teach.  He  was  nourished  on  the  succulent  hu- 
mor of  the  old  French  farces,  with  their  hearty 
253 


THE  DRAMA   IN  FRANCE 

fun  and  their  pertinent  sketches  of  character. 
He  had  spied  out  the  secrets  of  the  Spanish  play- 
wrights, fertile  inventors  of  amusing  situations. 
He  had  absorbed  every  device    of  the   Italian 

I    comedy-of-masks  with  its    incessant    liveliness 

i    and  its  ingenuity  of  intrigue. 

By  years  of  acting  as  a  stroller  in  the  provinces 
he  had  taught  himself  how  to  hold  the  attention 
of  the  illiterate  audience  while  he  was  unfolding 
his  plot  and  while  he  was  carrying  on  his  story. 
By  bitter  experience  he  learned  that  a  play,  how- 
ever lofty  in  design  or  however  poetic  in  expres- 
sion, is  nothing,  and  less  than  nothing,  if  it  cannot 
please  contemporary  playgoers.  Timidly  at  first 
and  tentatively,  he  began  to  put  something  more 
into  his  plays  than  mere  amusement.  He  began 
to  impart  a  serious  meaning  to  the  comic  drama. 
He  began  to  use  his  comedies  to  express  his  own 

/(  feelings  and  his  own  opinions  about  the  struc- 

'  ture  of  society  and  the  conduct  of  life.  He  recog- 
nized that  as  a  comic  dramatist  it  was  his  duty, 
first  of  all,  to  make  the  spectators  laugh ;  but  he 
was  able  skilfully  to  enlarge  his  manner  so  that 
he  could  also  make  them  think  even  while  they 
were  laughing.  He  had  an  imaginative  insight 
into  the  absurdities,  the  frailties,  the  petty  faults, 
and  the  lesser  vices  of  human  nature.  What  he 
observed  he  reflected  upon ;  and  he  related  it  to 
the  larger  outlook  on  human  nature  which  was 
254 


THE  DRAMA   IN   FRANCE 

his  also;  and  when  he  reproduced  upon  the 
stage  what  he  had  seen  in  the  world  his  social 
satire  was  informed  with  the  shrewdest  com- 
mon sense,  and  it  was  sustained  by  abundant 
and  exuberant  humor,  by  a  power  of  compelling 
laughter  unequaled  among  all  the  moderns. 

\It  was  this  penetration  of  Moliere's  humor  into 
th^  secrets  of  our  common  humanity,  combined 
with  his  mastery  of  the  technic  of  the  theater, 
so  that  there  was  ever  a  perfect  adaption  of  the 
means  to  the  end,  which  has  made  his  comedies 
the  final  model  of  that  "  picture  of  life  which  is 
also  a  judgment."  The  humorist  was  a  moral- 
ist, as  all  great  humbrists  have  been ;  and  he  had, 
moreover,  the  melancholy  which  is  ever  the  ac- 
companiment of  a  profound  humor.  His  nature 
was  really  richer  than  Racine's  and  deeper  than 
Corneille's,  and  his  vision  of  life. was  more  pier- 
cing; and  therefore  the  range  of  his  comedy  was 
far  wider  than  the  range  of  their  tragedy.  Indeed, 
he  exercised  himself  in  more  different  species 
of  the  drama  than  any  other  of  the  great  dra- 
matists. Shakspere  is  versatile  enough,  with  his 
histories  and  tragedies  and  romantic-comedies  and 
farces.  But  Moliere  is  even  more  multifarious. 
He  attempted  pure  farce,  the  *  Medecin  Malgre 
Lui ' ;  the  comedy-of-intrigue,  the  '  Etourdi ' ;  the 
comedy-of-manners,  the  '  ficole  des  Femmes'; 
the  comedy-of-character,  the  *  Avare  ' ;  romantic- 
255 


THE    DRAMA    IN   FRANCE 

comedy,  the  *  Amphitryon  ' ;  tragi-comedy,  *  Don 
Garcie';  comedy-ballet,  'Monsieur  de  Pour- 
ceaugnac  '  ;  criticism  in  dialog,  the  '  Critique  de 
I'Ecole  des  Femmes  ' ;  satiric  interlude,  the  *  Im- 
promptu de  Versailles  ' ;  legendary  drama,  '  Don 
Juan.'  No  one  has  ever  handled  comedy  in  its 
various  aspects  so  brilliantly  and  so  broadly  as 
Moliere;  and  he  has  left  us  in  the  'Femmes  Sa- 
vantes  '  the  incomparable  model  of  pure  comedy 
at  its  highest  and  best,  v^hile  he  presented  us 
also  with  the  type  of  comedy  sustained  by  phi- 
losophy in  the  'Misanthrope,'  of  comedy  gently 
relaxing  into  farce  in  the  '  Bourgeois  Gentil- 
homme,'  and  of  comedy  almost  stiffening  into 
drama  in  'Tartuffe.' 

No  one  of  Moliere's  comedies  is  more  charac- 
teristic than  'Tartuffe,'  more  liberal  in  its  treat- 
ment of  our  common  humanity,  braver  in  its 
assault  upon  hypocrisy,  or  more  masterly  in  its 
technic.  And  the  technical  problem  was  as  diffi- 
cult as  the  theme  was  daring.  Bringing  before 
us  a  man  who  uses  the  language  of  religion  as  a 
cloak  for  the  basest  self-seeking,  Moliere  devised 
his  situations  so  artfully  that  the  spectators  can 
discount  the  villain's  fair  words,  and  that  they 
know  him  for  what  he  is,  even  before  he  makes 
his  first  appearance.  The  opening  scenes  de- 
serve the  high  praise  of  Goethe;  and  indeed 
there  is  no  more  adroit  exposition  in  the  history 
256 


THE    DRAMA    IN    FRANCE 

of  the  drama.  Two  acts  are  employed  to  set 
before  us  the  family  relations  of  the  credulous 
Orgon,  into  whose  confidence  the  unscrupulous 
Tartuffe  has  wormed  himself.  We  are  made 
acquainted  with  Orgon's  second  wife,  with  his 
old  mother,  with  his  son  and  his  daughter,  and 
with  the  whole  household. 

Tartuffe  does  not  appear  until  the  third  of  the 
five  acts ;  and  by  that  time  the  audience  is  ready 
for  him  and  able  to  see  through  him  at  once. 
His  projects  are  plain,  even  if  they  are  some- 
what contradictory— as  the  plans  of  a  villain  often 
are.  He  is  seeking  to  capture  Orgon's  wealth 
for  himself,  to  marry  Orgon's  daughter,  and  at 
the  same  time  to  seduce  Orgon's  young  wife. 
However  he  may  disguise  his  foul  purpose  be- 
neath pious  phrases,  the  spectators  are  never  in 
doubt  as  to  his  true  character;  and  he  has  no  need 
of  any  aside  to  elucidate  his  motives.  Never 
does  he  lower  the  mask,  as  lago  so  often  does, 
or  lay  his  soul  bare'in  soliloquy.  Once  we  think 
he  has  been  caught  and  is  about  to  be  exposed; 
but  again  he  wins  over  Orgon  by  the  very  ex- 
travagance of  his  self-accusation.  Once  more 
he  is  led  actually  to  betray  himself,  making  love 
to  Orgon's  wife  with  Orgon  concealed  under  the 
table.  And  then  when  he  sees  that  he  is  found 
out  at  last  he  stands  forth  brutally  and  claims  the 
house  as  his  under  a  deed  of  gift.  Furthermore, 
257 


i 


THE   DRAMA   IN   FRANCE 

he  denounces  his  benefactor  as  implicated  in  a 
political  intrigue;  and  Orgon  finds  himself  in  a 
pitiful  situation  with  total  ruin  impending.  At 
the  very  end  of  the  play,  when  there  seems  to 
be  no  way  out  of  the  difficulty,  Moliere  most 
artfully  unties  the  knot  by  the  intervention  of 
the  King,  Louis  XIV  himself,  who  is  made  to 
exert  his  arbitrary  power  to  free  the  foolish  Orgon 
and  to  send  Tartuffe  to  prison. 

Before  Moliere  wrote,  French  comedy  had  been 
excessively  romantic  in  manner,  with  its  plots 
fabricated  out  of  adventures  and  accidents,  and 

l»  with   its   personages  of  tradition  and   fantasy. 

((^Moliere  brought  comedy  back  to  reality.  He 
pdealt  directly  with  life  as  he  beheld  it  about 
;  him.  He  set  upon  the  stage  the  men  and  women 
of  his  own  time,  a  wonderful  collection  of  por- 
traits,—vital,  vigorous,  and  undeniable  in  their 
veracity.  In  this  splendid  series  of  comedies 
the  age  of  Louis  XIV  starts  again  into  life,  with 
all  its  decorum,  its  social  ease,  its  hardness  of 
heart;  we  are  permitted  to  visit  the  court  and 
the  town,  and  to  make  acquaintance  with  the 
nobles,  the  burghers,  the  physicians,  the  actors, 
and  the  men-of-letters,  with  the  lackeys,  the 
serving-maids,  the  young  girls,  the  prudes,  and 
the  coquettes. 

We  can  see  Moliere's  wholesome  sympathy 
with  youth  and  love;  we  can  note  his  kindli- 
258    . 


THE   DRAMA    IN    FRANCE 

ness  and  his  common  sense;  and  we  cannot 
help  remarking  his  ever-growing  detestation  of  |  , 
affectation  and  of  pretense.  In  all  his  larger 
comedies  the  dominant  note  is  sincerity,  a 
scorching  scorn  for  sham  and  humbug,  a  burning 
hatred  of  hypocrisy. '  He  is  honest  himself  and 
frank;  his  satire  is  never  mean  or  malevolent; 
his  attack  is  always  open  and  direct.  His  hearty 
laughter  clears  the  air;  and  we  love  him  for 
the  enemies  he  made.  Now  and  again,  it  may 
be  admitted,  his  tone  is  hard;  and  it  must  be 
acknowledged  further  that  he  rarely  softens  into 
pathos.  Indeed,  of  pathos,  which  is  generally 
the  inseparable  accompaniment  of  humor,  Mo- 
liere  had  almost  as  little  as  Aristophanes.  What 
he  had  instead  of  pathos  was  melancholy,— a 
puissant  and  a  searching  melancholy,  which 
strangely  sustains  his  inexhaustible  mirth  and 
his  triumphant  gaiety.  Sometimes,  while  we 
are  laughing  at  the  sheer  fun  which  envelops 
his  broader  comedies,  we  are  allowed  to  catch 
a  glimpse  of  his  inexpressible  sadness  which  is 
at  the  core  of  his  humor. 

/  IVloliere  is  superior  to  Corneille  and  to  Racine 

/in  the  variety  of  his  themes,  in  the  breadth  of 

l^his  philosophy,  in  the  ingenuity  of  his  technic;       v, 

and  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  he  is  a  writer  of 

comedies  while  they  both  wrote  tragedies,  and 

that  he  did  not  always   use  verse,  he  can  be 

259 


THE    DRAMA    IN    FRANCE 

called  a  greater  poet  than  either  of  them,—  if  we 
may  give  to  the  word  poet  its  larger  meaning. 
To  us  who  speak  English  the  rimed  alexandrine 
is  a  rhythm  too  artificial  and  too  complicated  to 
be  perfectly  satisfactory  in  the  drama;  and  to 
many  of  us  French  itself  is  not  a  poetic  language. 
But  even  if  the  French  are  somewhat  lacking 
in  the  energetic  imagination  which  ought  to  in- 
form tragedy,  they  have  special  qualifications  for 
comedy.  They  are  easily  witty;  they  are  in- 
ventively humorous;  they  have  a  sharp  sense  of 
the  ridiculous;  they  are  governed  by  the  social 
instinct.  It  is  natural  enough  that  the  greatest 
of  comic  dramatists  should  be  a  Frenchman,  and 
that  we  should  owe  to  Moliere  the  final  form  of 
comedy.  Quite  possibly  the  form  of  comedy 
which  Moliere  established  in  French  is  very  like 
that  which  Menander  had  devised  for  his  own 
use  in  Greece  two  thousand  years  earlier;  but 
however  probable  the  suggestion  may  be  and 
however  alluring,  there  is  no  proof  of  it  avail- 
able now,  since  the  plays  of  Menander  are  lost  to 
us  forever. 

Not  with  Menander  is  Moliere  to  be  measured, 
and  not  with  Corneille  and  Racine;  his  place  is 
rather  with  the  supreme  masters  of  the  drama, 
with  Sophocles  and  with  Shakspere.  In  pure 
comedy  his  supremacy  is  as  indisputable  as  that 
of  Shakspere  both  in  romantic-comedy  and  in 
260 


THE   DRAMA   IN    FRANCE 

tragedy,  and  as  that  of  Sophocles  in  tragedy 
alone.  He  may  be  the  least  of  the  three,  perhaps ; 
but  he  is  the  latest  also.  He  has  this  one  ad- 
vantage over  his  predecessors:  he  is  not  so  far// 
distant  from  us  as  they  are.  The  society  heH 
has  depicted  is  more  like  the  world  we  are  fa- 
miliar with.  Above  all,  the  theater  for  which 
he  wrote  is  almost  the  same  as  ours. 

It  was  the  special  good  fortune  of  Moliere  that 
he  came  forward  as  a  dramatist  at  the  very  mo- 
ment when  the  circumstances  of  a  theatrical 
performance  had  already  assumed  the  aspect*  to 
which  we  are  nowadays  accustomed.  Whereas 
the  plays  of  the  great  Greek  dramatist  were  pre- 
pared to  be  performed  outdoors  in  a  hollow  of 
the  hills  without  either  stage  or  scenery,  and 
whereas  the  plays  of  the  great  English  dramatist 
were  intended  to  be  produced  in  a  theater  with- 
out a  roof  and  on  a  stage  without  scenery,  the 
plays  of  the  great  French  dramatist  were  written 
to  be  acted  in  a  theater  properly  roofed  and  [  I 
illuminated  by  artificial  light,  and  having  a  stage 
supplied  with  scenery.  In  the  masterpieces  of 
Sophocles  we  can  see  the  ancient  form  in  its 
most  consummate  perfection,  strange  and  re- 
mote as  that  may  seem  to  us  to-day;  and  in  the 
masterpieces  of  Shakspere,  mighty  as  was  his 
genius,  we  cannot  but  perceive  the  disadvan- 
tage of  the  form  he  had  to  use,  a  form  which 
261 


THE    DRAMA    IN    FRANCE 

was  almost  medieval  and  which  was  disesta- 
blished even  in  England  only  a  few  years  after  he 
withdrew  from  active  labor  as  a  playwright. 
But  in  the  masterpieces  of  Moliere  we  have  a, 
form  which  is  indisputably  modern  and  per- 
fectly in  accord  with  the  conditions  of  the  theater 
at  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century.  The 
plays  of  Sophocles  and  of  Shakspere  cannot  be 
shown  on  the  stage  of  to-day  without  many 
suppressions  and  modifications;  but  the  plays 
of  Moliere  can  be  performed  now  anywhere 
without  change  or  excision,  absolutely  as  they 
were  acted  by  their  author  and  his  comrades 
nearly  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago.  So  far 
as  the  external  form  of  their  dramas  is  con- 
cerned, Sophocles  is  ancient,  Shakspere  is  medi- 
eval, Moliere  is  modern;  and  the  large  frame- 
work of  his  ampler  comedies  has  supplied  a 
model  for  the  dramatists  of  every  living  language. 


362 


VIII.    THE  DRAMA   IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH 
CENTURY 


EVERYWHERE  in  Europe  the  modern  di^ma 
has  been  evolved  from  out  the  drama  of  the 
middle  ages;  but  the  development  had  been 
slower  in  France  than  in  Spain  and  in  England; 
and  this  retarding  of  its  evolution  was  fortunate 
for  the  French,  since  the  golden  days  of  their 
dramatic  literature  arrived  only  after  the  condi- 
tions of  the  theater  had  become  far  less  medieval 
than  they  had  been  during  the  golden  days  of 
the  Spanish  and  of  the  English  dramatic  litera- 
tures. It  was  natural  that  the  more  modern 
form  of  play  should  be  taken  as  a  model  by  the 
poets  of  the  other  countries,  the  more  especially 
at  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century,  when 
the  French  were  everywhere  accepted  as  the  ar- 
biters of  art,  the  custodians  of  taste,  and  the 
guardians  of  the  laws  by  which  genius  was  to 
be  gaged.  In  England  the  Puritans  had  closed 
the  places  of  amusement  and  had  thus  broken 
263 


THE   DRAMA    IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY 

off  the  theatrical  traditions  that  ran  far  back 
into  the  middle  ages ;  and  when  the  playhouses 
opened  again  after  the  Restoration,  the  mana- 
gers had  to  gratify  new  likings  which  king  and 
courtiers  had  brought  back  with  them  from 
France.  Even  tho  the  plain  people  in  London 
continued  to  prefer  the  plays  of  Shakspere  to 
belauded  adaptations  from  Corneille  or  Racine 
and  to  icily  decorous  imitations  like  the  *  Cato ' 
of  Addison,  and  even  tho  the  plebeian  folk  in 
Madrid  still  relished  the  plays  of  Lope  de  Vega 
and  Calderon,  the  English  men-of-letters  and  the 
Spanish  men-of-letters  were  united  in  taking  an 
apologetic  tone  toward  the  earlier  dramas  which 
had  pleased  their  less  cultivated  forefathers.  In 
England  as  in  Spain  the  learned  critic  was  will- 
ing to  admit  that  these  earlier  dramas  had  a 
certain  rough  power  which  might  move  the  un- 
educated, but  he  had  no  desire  to  deny  that  they 
wanted  art.  For  instance.  Doctor  Johnson, 
when  he  brought  out  his  edition  of  Shakspere  in 
the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  when 
he  ventured  a  timid  suggestion  that  possibly  the 
so-called  rules  of  the  theater  were  not  abso- 
lutely infallible,  seems  to  have  felt  almost  as  tho 
he  was  taking  his  life  in  his  hands. 

In  Italy  and  in  Germany,  as  in  England  and  in 
Spain,  the  men-of-letters  maintained  the  neces- 
sity of  conforming  to  the  theatrical  theory  of  the 
264 


THE  DRAMA   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY 

French,  because  they  believed  the  French  to  be 
the  only  true  exponents  of  the  Greek  tradition, 
which  it  was  the  bounden  duty  of  every  dra- 
matic poet  to  follow  blindly.  The  rules  of  the 
theater  as  the  French  declared  them  had  only  a 
remote  connection  with  the  Greek  tradition;  and 
they  consisted  mainly  of  purely  negative  re- 
strictions. They  told  the  dramatic  poet  what  he 
was  forbidden  to  do,  and  they  declared  what  a 
tragedy  must  not  be.  To  accord  with  the  de- 
mands of  the  French  theory  a  tragedy  should 
not  have  more  or  less  than  five  acts  and  it  should 
not  be  in  prose ;  it  should  deal  only  with  a  lofty 
theme,  having  queens  and  kings  for  its  chief  fig- 
ures, and  avoiding  all  visible  violence  of  action  or 
of  speech,  and  all  other  breaches  of  decorum ;  it 
should  eschew  humor,  keeping  feelf  ever  serious 
and  stately,  and  never  allowing  any  underplot; 
and,  above  all,  it  should  permit  no  change  of 
scene  during  the  whole  play,  and  it  should  not 
allow  the  time  taken  by  the  story  to  extend  over 
more  than  twenty-four  hours. 

These  were  the  rules  to  conform  to  which 
Corneille  cramped  himself  and  curbed  his  indis- 
putable genius,  with  the  result  that  he  is  to 
Shakspere  "  as  a  clipped  hedge  is  to  a  forest," — 
to  quote  an  unsympathetic  British  critic.  A  cer- 
tain likeness  to  the  virgin  woods  is  discoverable 
in  the  Elizabethan  drama,  whereas  the  drama  of 
265 


THE   DRAMA   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY 

Louis  XIV  resembles  rather  a  pleasure-park  laid 
out  by  some  such  architect  as  Lenotre.  French 
tragedy  had  a  graceful  symmetry  of  its  own,  but 
it  was  lacking  in  bold  variety  and  in  imaginative 
energy.  Here  is  an  added  reason  why  it  was 
widely  acceptable  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
which  has  been  termed  "  an  age  whose  poetry 
was  without  romance  "  and  "  whose  philosophy 
was  without  insight."  The  century  itself,  rather 
than  the  French  example,  is  to  blame  if  it  has 
left  so  few  poetic  plays  deserving  to  survive. 
What  Lowell  called  "  its  inefficacy  for  the  higher 
reaches  of  poetry,  its  very  good  breeding  that 
made  it  shy  of  the  raised  voice  and  the  flushed 
features  of  enthusiasm,"  enabled  the  century  to 
make  its  prose  supple  for  the  elegancies  of  the 
social  circle  and  for  the  literature  which  sought 
to  reflect  these  elegancies.  "  Inevitably,  as  human 
intercourse  in  cities  grows  more  refined,  comedy 
will  grow  more  subtle,"  so  De  Quincey  declared; 
"  it  will  build  itself  on  distinctions  of  character 
less  grossly  defined  and  on  features  of  manners 
more  delicate  and  impalpable." 


A  FLEXIBLE  prose  is  plainly  the  fittest  instru- 
ment for  the  comedy-of-manners ;  and  the  com- 
edy-of-manners  is  as  plainly  the  kind  of  drama 
266 


THE   DRAMA   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH 


^W  ^ 


%^^ 


best  suited  to  the  limitations  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  By  their  comedies  rather  than  by  their 
tragedies  are  the  dramatists  of  that  century  now 
remembered.  Their  comedies,  like  their  trage- 
dies, were  composed  in  imitation  of  French 
models;  but  the  influence  of  Moliere  was  as 
stimulating  as  the  influence  of  Corneille  and 
Racine  had  been  stifling.  Within  a  few  years 
after  Moliere's  death  the  type  of  comedy  which 
he  had  elaborated  to  suit  his  own  needs  and  to 
contain  his  own  veracious  portrayal  of  life  as  he 
saw  it,  had  been  taken  across  to  England  by  the 
comic  dramatists  of  the  Restoration,  some  of 
whom  had  borrowed  plots  from  him  and  all  of 
whom  had  tried  to  absorb  his  method.  No  one 
of  the  English  dramatists  had  Moliere's  insight 
into  character,  or  his  sturdy  morality.  Con- 
greve  and  Wycherley,  Farquhar  and  Vanbrugh 
helped  themselves  to  Moliere's  framework  only 
to  hang  it  about  with  dirty  linen.  At  times  Mo- 
liere had  been  plain  of  speech,  but  he  was  ever 
clean-minded;  whereas  the  English  dramatists 
of  the  Restoration  were  often  foul  in  phrase  and 
frequently  filthy  in  thought  also. 

Clever  as  these  Restoration  comedies  were 
and  brilliant  in  their  reflection  of  glittering  im- 
morality, their  tone  was  too  offensive  for  our 
modern  taste,  and  scarcely  one  of  them  now 
survives  on  the  stage.  Yet  the  form  they  had 
267 


THE   DRAMA   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY 

copied  from  Moliere  they  firmly  established  in 
England,  where  the  conditions  of  the  theater 
had  come  to  be  like  those  in  France;  and  this 
form  has  been  accepted  by  all  the  later  comic 
dramatists  of  our  language,  who  have  never 
cared  to  return  to  the  looser  and  more  medieval 
form  which  had  to  satisfy  the  humorous  play- 
wrights under  Elizabeth.  Steele  and  Fielding 
and,  later  in  the  century,  Goldsmith  and  Sheridan 
continue  in  English  comedy  the  tradition  esta- 
blished by  Moliere.  In  '  She  Stoops  to  Conquer ' 
and  in  the  *  Rivals '  there  is  an  element  of  rol- 
licking farce  not  quite  in  keeping  with  the  ele- 
vation of  high  comedy  but  not  unlike  the  joyous 
gaiety  which  laughs  all  through  the  '  Bourgeois 
Gentilhomme.'  In  the  *  School  for  Scandal '  we 
have  an  English  comedy  with  something  like  the 
solid  structure  of  the  'Femmes  Savantes,' but 
narrower  in  its  outlook,  not  so  piercing  in  il;^ 
insight,  and  far  more  metallic  in  its  luster. 

The  English  followers  of  Moliere  are  many, 
but  they  are  not  more  numerous  or  more  amus- 
ing than  those  who  in  his  own  country  profited 
by  the  example  he  had  left.  Regnard  is  almost 
the  equal  of  his  master  in  adroitness  of  versifica- 
tion and  even  in  comic  force,  in  the  power  of 
compelling  laughter.  *  Monsieur  de  Pourceau- 
gnac '  has  hardly  added  more  to  the  mirth  of  the 
French  than  has  the  '  Legataire  Universel.'     But 

2^ 


THE   DRAMA    IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH    CENTURY 

Regnard  is  fantastic  and  arbitrary  in  the  conduct  ^ 
of  his  plots;  and  he  lacks  the  truth  to  life  and 
the  penetration  which  characterize  Moliere.  Le- 
sage  comes  nearer,  in  his  knowledge  of  human 
nature  and  in  his  appreciation  of  its  frailties, 
altho  it  is  in  his  novels  rather  than  in  his  plays 
that  he  reveals  himself  most  fully  as  a  disciple 
of  Moliere.  Like  Fielding  in  England,  Lesage 
in  France  carried  over  into  prose-fiction  ^ev., 
method  of  character-drawing  which  he  hadilt:^:^ 
quired  from  the  greatest  of  all  comic  dramatists.  '^ 
In  the  '  Depit  Amoureux '  and  in  the  '  Eeolfe  •' 
des  Femmes  '  Moliere  had  shown  how  to  set  on 
the  stage  certain  more  delicate  phases  of  femi- 
nine personality;  Marivaux  pushed  the  analysis 
still  further,  thereby  enriching  French  comedy 
with  a  series  of  studies  of  women  in  love,— 
women  at  once  ethereal,  sophisticated,  and  fas- 
cinating. Broader  than  Marivaux  was  Beaumar- 
chais,  broader  and  franker;  his  psychology  was 
swifter,  his  action  was  more  direct,  and  his 
stagecraft  was  more  obvious.  It  was  *Tar- 
tufife '  and  the  *  Etourdi '  that  he  had  taken  as 
his  models,  but  he  was  only  clever  and  wily 
where  Moliere  was  transparently  sincere;  and 
instead  of  the  large  liberality  of  the  dramatist 
under  Louis  XIV  the  dramatist  under  Louis  XVI 
had  a  caustic  skepticism.  The  career  of  Beau- 
marchais  was  as  varied  in  its  vicissitudes  as  that 
269 


THE  DRAMA   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY 

of  his  own  Figaro;  he  was  an  adventurer  him- 
self, like  Sheridan,  his  contemporary  on  the  other 
side  of  the  Channel.  The  *  Barber  of  Seville ' 
was  as  lively  and  as  vivacious  as  the  *  Rivals ' ; 
and  the  *  Marriage  of  Figaro '  was  as  scintillating 
and  as  hard  as  the  '  School  for  Scandal.' 

There  was  a  disintegrating  satire  in  these 
comedies  of  Beaumarchais,  a  daring  bitterness 
of  attack  like  that  of  a  reckless  journalist  who 
might  happen  also  to  be  an  ingenious  and  witty 
playwright.  Where  Moliere  had  assaulted  hy- 
pocrisy in  religion  and  humbug  in  medicine, 
Beaumarchais  made  an  onslaught  on  the  Ancient 
Regime  as  a  whole.  No  doubt  a  portion  of  the 
vogue  Beaumarchais  enjoyed  among  his  con- 
temporaries was  due  to  their  covert  sympathy 
with  the  thesis  he  was  so  cleverly  sustaining  on 
the  stage.  He  knew  how  to  profit  by  the  scan- 
dal aroused  by  his  scathing  insinuations  against 
the  established  order.  Yet  he  was  not  depen- 
dent on  these  factitious  aids,  and  his  solidly  con- 
structed comedies  reveal  remarkable  dramaturgic 
felicity.  They  have  established  themselves 
firmly  on  the  French  stage,  where  they  are  still 
seen  with  pleasure,  altho  certain  polemic  pas- 
sages here  and  there  strike  us  now  as  extrane- 
ous and  as  over-vehement.  Beaumarchais  is  the 
connecting-link  between  the  French  comedy  of 
the  seventeenth  century  and  that  of  the  nine- 
teenth, between  Moliere  and  Augier. 
270 


THE  DRAMA   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH    CENTURY 
III 

Altho  the  French  theorists  insisted  on  a  com- 
plete separation  of  the  comic  and  the  tragic,  dis- 
approving fiercely  of  any  humorous  relief  in  a 
tragedy,  they  also  maintained  that  comedy  should 
hold  itself  aloof  from  vulgar  subjects,  that  it 
should  ever  be  genteel;  and  there  were  some 
who  held  that  it  ought  to  be  unfailingly  digni- 
fied. Even  in  England  Goldsmith  was  reproached 
for  having  disfigured  'She  Stoops  to  Conquer' 
with  scenes  of  broad  humor  **  too  low  even  for 
farce";  and  Sheridan  in  the  prolog  of  the 
*  Rivals '  felt  forced  to  make  a  plea  for  laughter 
as  a  not  unnatural  accompaniment  of  comedy. 
Without  asserting  categorically  that  the  drama 
should  be  strenuously  didactic,  many  critics  con- 
sidered that  it  was  the  duty  of  comedy,  not  first 
of  all  to  depict  human  nature  as  it  is  with  its 
foibles  and  its  failings,  and  not  to  clear  the  air 
with  hearty  laughter  wholesome  in  itself,  but 
chiefly  to  teach,  to  set  a  good  example,  to  hold 
aloft  the  standard  of  manners  and  of  morals. 
Dryden  had  declared  that  the  general  end  of  all 
poetry  was  "  to  instruct  delightfully  " ;  and  not  a 
few  later  writers  of  less  authority  were  willing 
enough  to  waive  the  delight  if  only  they  could 
make  sure  of  the  instruction. 

Thus  there  came  into  existence  a  new  dramatic 
species,  which  flourished  for  a  little  space  on  both 
271 


THE   DRAMA    IN    THE    EIGHTEENTH    CENTURY 

sides  of  the  English  Channel  and  which  was 
known  in  London  as  sentimental-comedy  and  in 
Paris  as  tearful-comedy,  comedie  larmoyante.  The 
most  obvious  characteristic  of  this  comedy  was 
that  it  was  not  comic;  and  in  fact  it  was  not  in- 
tended to  be  comic,  but  pathetic.  It  was  a  mis- 
take that  a  play  of  this  new  class  should  call 
itself  comedy,  which  was  precisely  what  it  was 
not,  and  that  by  this  false  claim  it  should  hinder 
the  healthy  growth  of  true  comedy  with  its 
ampler  pictures  of  life  and  its  contagious  gaiety. 
But  the  new  species,  however  miscalled,  re- 
sponded to  a  new  need  of  the  times.  It  was  the 
result  of  that  awakening  sensibility  of  the  soul, 
of  that  growing  tenderness  of  spirit,  of  that  ex- 
pansion of  sympathy,  which  was  after  a  while 
to  bring  about  the  Romanticist  upheaval. 

In  England  this  sentimental-comedy  never 
amounted  to  much,  even  tho  it  had  for  one  of 
its  earliest  practitioners  Steele,  who  claimed  that 
a  certain  play  of  his  had  been  ''  damned  for  its 
piety."  But  Steele,  undeniable  humorist  as  he 
was,  lacked  the  instinctive  touch  of  the  born 
playwright,  and  his  humor  was  too  delicate  to 
adjust  itself  easily  to  the  huge  theaters  of  Lon- 
don. Steele's  is  the  only  interesting  name  in  all 
the  list  of  writers  for  the  English  stage  who  in- 
tended to  edify  rather  than  to  amuse  and  who 
did  not  regret  that  their  comedies  called  for  tears 
272 


THE   DRAMA   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY 

rather  than  laughter.  That  the  liking  for  senti- 
mental-comedy was  more  transient  in  England 
than  in  France  perhaps  was  due  to  the  fact  that 
the  Londoners  had  already  wept  abundantly  over 
dramas  of  an  irregular  species,  not  comedies  of 
course,  nor  yet  true  tragedies,  but  dealing 
pathetically  with  the  humbler  sort  of  people. 
Of  this  irregular  species  Lillo's  'George  Barn- 
well '  and  Moore's  *  Gamester '  may  serve  as 
specimens.  Difficult  to  classify  as  these  plays 
may  have  been,  they  were  moving  in  their  ap- 
peal to  the  emotions  of  the  London  citizens ;  and 
they  must  be  accepted  as  spontaneous  attempts 
at  a  kind  of  play  which  the  French  later  in  the 
century  were  to  strive  for  under  the  name  of 
tragtdie  bourgeoise,  the  tragedy  of  common  life, 
with  no  vain  tinsel  of  royalty  and  no  false  per- 
spective of  antiquity. 

In  France,  where  comedy  and  tragedy  were 
more  rigorously  restricted  than  in  England,  the 
vogue  of  sentimental-comedy  was  less  fleeting, 
sustained  as  it  was  by  the  sudden  success  of  the 
pathetic  plays  of  La  Chaussee  and  by  the  ardent 
proclamations  of  Diderot.  With  all  his  intelli- 
gence, Diderot  failed  to  write  a  single  good  play 
of  his  own;  but  he  was  swift  to  see  that  the 
prescribed  molds  of  tragedy  and  comedy,  as  the 
French  theorists  had  established  them,  were  not 
only  too  narrow  but  above  all  too  few  for  a 
273 


THE  DRAMA   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH    CENTURY 

proper  representation  of  the  infinite  variety  of 
human  life.  Envying  the  larger  liberty  of  the 
English  theater  and  approving  of  the  comidie  lar- 
moyante  and  the  tragedie  bourgeoise,  he  demanded 
a  frank  recognition  of  the  right  of  these  new 
species  not  only  to  exist  but  also  to  be  received 
as  the  equals  of  tragedy  and  comedy.  Unfortu- 
nately Diderot  could  not  sustain  precept  by 
example;  his  own  attempts  at  play-writing  were 
painfully  unsatisfactory,  and  the  tearful-comedies 
of  La  Chaussee  were  poor  things  at  best,  even 
tho  they  had  won  favor  for  a  little  while.  Per- 
haps the  most  pleasing  example  of  French  sen- 
timental-comedy was  Sedaine's  '  Philosophe  sans 
le  savoir ' ;  and  in  spite  of  its  amiable  optimism 
and  its  touching  situations,  the  tone  of  this  inno- 
cent little  play  was  thin,  and  its  manner  was 
rather  argumentative  than  appealing. 


IV 

If  we  needed  proof  of  the  temporary  popular- 
ity of  the  ingenuous  domestic  drama  which  pre- 
tended to  be  comedy,  altho  it  preferred  tears  to 
laughter,  we  could  find  this  in  the  fact  that  it 
tempted  even  Voltaire  to  essay  it.  Yet  for  sen- 
timental-comedy it  would  seem  as  tho  Voltaire 
had  few  natural  qualifications,  since  he  was  defi- 
cient in  sentiment,  in  pathos,  and  in  humor. 
274 


THE   DRAMA   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH    CENTURY 

Wit  he  had  in  profusion,— indeed,  he  was  the 
arch-wit  of  the  century;  and  he  was  so  amaz- 
ingly clever  that  when  he  attempted  tragedy  he 
was  able  to  make  his  wit  masquerade  even  as 
poetry.  In  the  drama,  as  in  almost  every  other 
department  of  literature,  Voltaire  is  the  domi- 
nating figure  of  his  time.  He  was  very  fond 
of  the  theater,  and  he  had  possessed  himself  pi 
some  of  the  secrets  of  the  dramaturgic  art.  (^He 
could  devise  an  ingenious  story;  but  he  had  no 
firm  mastery  of  human  motive.^  However  art- 
fully his  plots  might  be  put  together,  they  were 
generally  improbable  in  the  main  theme  and 
arbitrary  in  the  several  episodes. 

Even  his  best  tragedy,  'Zaire,'  which  is  less 
of  an  improvisation  than  most  of  his  other  plays, 
and  which  still  has  an  intermittent  vitality  on 
the  French  stage,  was  little  more  than  a  melo- 
drama, as  the  characters  existed  solely  for  the 
situations  by  which  they  were  created.  Altho  his 
versification  was  feeble,  and  altho  he  was  never 
truly  a  poet,  he  was  sometimes  really  eloquent. 
As  a  dramatist  he  was  often  self-conscious,  not 
to  say  insincere;  his  mind  was  on  the  minor 
effects  of  the  stage  and  not  on  the  larger  prob- 
lems of  the  soul.  His  conception  of  tragedy 
was  petty;  it  was  without  elevation  or  auster- 
ity; and  yet  he  thought  that  the  French  had 
been  able  to  improve  on  the  type  of  tragedy 
275 


THE   DRAMA   IN  THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY 

which  they  had  borrowed  from  the  Greeks.  He 
did  not  see  that  French  tragedy,  vaunting  itself 
as  absolutely  Greek,  had  acquired  from  the 
Spanish  drama  a  trick  of  complicating  its  plot 
with  ingenious  surprises,  than  which  nothing 
could  be  more  foreign  to  the  large  simplicity  of 
the  Athenian  drama.  He  did  not  perceive  that 
what  his  countrymen  had  been  trained  to  expect 
and  to  admire  in  the  tragic  drama  "  was  a  set  of 
circumstances  peculiar  to  that  play,  with  a  set 
of  characters  common  to  all  French  plays  in 
general,  —  the  mesdames  et  seigneurs  of  the 
Spanish  *  Cid '  of  Corneille,  the  Jewish  '  Athalie  * 
of  Racine,  and  the  Grecian  '  Merope '  of  Voltaire  '* 
himself. 

How  widely  the  ideal  of  tragedy  upheld  by  the 
French  dramatists  under  Louis  XV  differed  from 
that  pursued  by  the  English  playwrights  under 
Elizabeth,  and  also  from  that  followed  by  the 
Greek  poets  under  Pericles,  was  made  plain  by 
Voltaire's  own  formal  declaration  in  which  he  set 
up  a  standard  of  tragedy  as  he  understood  it: 
**To  compact  an  illustrious  and  interesting  event 
into  the  space  of  two  or  three  hours ;  to  make 
the  characters  appear  only  when  they  ought  to 
come  forth;  never  to  leave  the  stage  empty;  to 
put  together  a  plot  as  probable  as  it  is  at- 
tractive; to  say  nothing  unnecessary;  to  in- 
struct the  mind  and  move  the  heart;  to  be 
276 


THE  DRAMA   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY 

always  eloquent  in  verse  and  with  the  eloquence 
proper  to  each  character  represented ;  to  speak 
one's  tongue  with  the  same  purity  as  in  the 
most  chastened  prose,  without  allowing  the 
effort  of  riming  to  seem  to  hamper  the  thought; 
to  permit  no  single  line  to  be  hard  or  obscure  or 
declamatory;— these  are  the  conditions  which 
nowadays  one  insists  upon  in  a  tragedy."  From 
this  explicit  definition  it  is  evident  that  Voltaire 
regarded  tragedy  as  a  work  of  the  intelligence 
rather  than  of  the  imagination ;  and  it  might  even 
be  inferred  that  he  distrusted  the  imagination, 
and  that  he  thought  that  the  intelligence  could 
be  aided  in  the  accomplishment  of  its  task  by 
the  rules. 

The  rules  of  the  theater,  including  that  of 
the  Three  Unities,  had  been  adopted  in  France  in 
the  seventeenth  century  largely  because  Cor- 
neille  had  given  his  adhesion  to  them,  altho  they 
held  him  in  a  bondage  he  could  not  but  feel; 
and  they  were  maintained  in  France  in  the  eigh- 
teenth century  very  largely  because  of  the  au- 
thority of  Voltaire,  who  was  ever  ready  to  re- 
proach Corneille  for  every  chance  dereliction  and 
to  denounce  Shakspere  for  every  open  disre- 
gard of  dramatic  decorum.  The  weight  of  Vol- 
taire's authority  was  acknowledged  not  only  in 
France  but  throughout  Europe.  His  plays  were 
translated  and  acted  in  the  various  languages  of 
277 


THE   DRAMA   IN  THE   EIGHTEENTH    CENTURY 

civilization;  and  his  opinions  about  the  theater 
were  received  with  acquiescence  in  Italy,  in 
Germany,  and  in  England.  It  is  true  that  in  ' 
England,  while  the  professed  critics  deplored 
the  lamentable  lack  of  taste  shown  by  their  rude 
forefathers,  they  themselves  continued  to  enjoy 
the  actual  performance  of  the  vigorous  plays  of 
the  Elizabethan  dramatists.  It  is  true  that  in  / 
Italy  the  men-of-letters  who  accepted  the  rulings 
of  Voltaire  could  take  little  more  than  an  aca- 
demic interest  in  the  drama,  since  their  theater 
was  not  flourishing,  and  even  the  comedy-of- 
masks  seemed  to  be  wearing  itself  out.  It  is 
true  that  in  Germany  also  the  theater  was  in  a 
sorry  condition,  and  that  the  German  actors 
were  often  forced  to  perform  in  adaptations  of 
French  plays  in  default  of  native  dramas  worthy 
of  consideration. 

Charming  as  are  certain  of  the  comedies  of 
Goldoni,  they  are  slight  in  texture  and  super- 
ficial in  character;  and  it  is  significant  that  Gol- 
doni himself  felt  it  advisable  to  leave  his  native 
land  and  to  go  to  Paris  to  push  his  fortunes. 
Significant  is  it  also  of  the  increasing  cosmo- 
politanism of  the  theater  toward  the  end  of  the 
century  that  the  plot  of  one  of  Goldoni's  Italian 
comedies  was  utilized  by  Voltaire,  whose  French 
play  was  adapted  into  English  by  the  elder  Col- 
man.     Lofty  as    are    the    tragedies  of   Alfieri, 


THE   DRAMA   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY 

they  have  a  scholarly  rigidity  as  if  they  were  in- 
tended rather  for  the  closet  than  the  stage,  altho 
the  simplicity  of  their  structure  has  made  it 
possible  to  present  them  in  the  actual  theater. 
(  Italy  in  the  eighteenth  century  was  sunk  in  cor- 
ruption or  busy  with  petty  intrigue ;  and  it  was 
devoid  of  the  energy  of  will  which  is  the  vital 
element  of  the  drama.  Not  only  was  there  little 
expectation  or  even  hope  of  national  unity: 
there  was  in  fact  but  little  solidarity  of  feeling 
among  those  who  spoke  the  language.  The 
French  people,  and  the  English  also,  were  each 
of  them  conscious  of  their  nationality  and  proud 
of  it;  but  the  Italians  were  like  the  Germans 
in  having  neither  pride  nor  consciousness.  Italy 
>yas  only  a  geographical  expression  then ;  and 
no  fervid  lyrist  had  yet  proclaimed  the  large 
limits  of  the  German  fatherland.  The  Italians 
and  the  Germans,  whatever  their  merits  as  indi- 
viduals, were  then  as  peoples  too  infirm  of  pur- 
pose and  too  lax  of  will  to  be  ripe  for  an  out- 
flowering  of  the  drama  such  as  might  follow 
hard  upon  the  achievement  of  national  unity  and 
the  establishment  of  a  national  capital.  Very 
important  indeed  is  the  contribution  which  a 
city  can  make  to  the  development  of  a  dramatic 
literature;  and  not  only  Athens  but  also  Madrid,. 
London,  and  Paris  have  deserved  well  of  all 
lovers  of  the  drama. 

279 


THE  DRAMA  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


Altho  the  Germans  had  then  no  center  of  na- 
tional life  and  had  not  yet  felt  the  need  of  it, 
they  had  given  more  proof  of  resolution  than  the 
Italians;  and  it  was  in  the  eighteenth  century 
that  Frederick  laid  the  firm  foundation  of  the 
national  unity  to  be  achieved  more  than  a  century 
later.  It  was  in  Germany  again  that  there  arose 
a  stalwart  antagonist  to  withstand  Voltaire,  to 
destroy  the  universal  belief  in  the  infallibility  of 
French  criticism,  and  to  disestablish  the  pseudo- 
classicism  which  needed  to  be  swept  aside  be- 
fore a  rebirth  of  the  drama  was  possible, 
^.essing  was  the  best  equipped  and  the  most 
broad-minded  critic  of  esthetic  theory  who  ha^i 
come  forward  since  Aristotle;  and  he  had  not  a 
little  of  the  great  Greek's  commingled  keenness 
and  common  sense.  The  German  critic  was  not 
so  disinterested  as  Aristotle;  indeed,  what  strikes 
us  now  as  the  sole  defect  of  his  stimulating  study 
of  the  drama  is  its  polemic  tone.  It  was  in  the  stress 
of  a  contemporary  controversy  that  Lessing  set 
forth  eternal  principles  of  dramatic  art.  He  went 
into  the  arena  with  the  zest  of  the  trained  athlete; 
and  he  was  never  afraid  to  try  a  fall  with  Voltaire 
himself.  In  fact,  it  was  especially  in  the  hope  of 
a  grapple  with  the  French  dictator  of  the  republic 
of  letters  that  the  German  kept  his  loins  girded. 
280 


tHE   DRAMA   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY 

Lessing  had  not  only  a  courage  of  his  yown :  he 
had  also  the  solid  learning  of  his  race.  He  was 
a  scholar,  thoroughly  grounded  and  widely  read. 
He  knew  at  first  hand  the  Greek  drama  and  the 
Latin;  he  was  acquainted  with  Shakspere  and 
with  Lope  de  Vega  in  the  original;  he  was  tho- 
roughly familiar  with  the  French  theater,  and 
with  the  criticisms  made  against  it  in  Paris  itself. 
Original  as  Lessing  was,  he  profited  by  the  sug- 
gestions of  his  predecessors,  and  there  is  no  rea- 
son now  to  deny  his  immediate  indebtedness  to 
Diderot.  The  French  critic  it  was  who  pointed 
out  the  path,  but  only  the  German  critic  was  able 
to  attain  the  goal.  What  Diderot  had  happened 
merely  to  indicate  in  passing,  Lessing,  with  his 
wider  knowledge  of  life,  of  literature,  and  of  art, 
was  able  to  accomplish.  He  took  up  the  French 
rules  of  the  theater  with  their  insistence  on  the 
alleged  Three  Unities,  and\he  was  able  to  show  .  , 
the  baselessness  of  the  claim  that  they  are  de-  ^ 
rived  from  the  practice  or  the  precepts  of  the 
ancients.  Then  he  went  further  and  pointed  out 
the  inherent  absurdity  of  these  factitious  restric- 
tions and  their  fettering  effect  upon  the  French 
dramatic  poet,  even  when  they  were  kept  only 
in  letter  and  broken  in  spirit. 

/    Lessing  destroyed  the  superstitious  reverence    — 
for  the  French  theories ;  but  he  could  build  up 
as  vrell  as  tear  down.     German  literature  was 
281 


u 


THE   DRAMA   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY 

then  at  its  feeblest  period;  and  such  original 
German  pieces  as  might  exist  were  almost  as 
pitiful  as  the  weak  imitations  of  French  tragedy. 
The  German  theater  was  battling  for  life;  it 
was  barren  of  plays  worthy  of  good  acting;  it 
was  almost  as  deficient  in  good  actors  capable 
of  doing  justice  to  a  fine  drama;  and  it  attracted 
scant  and  uncultivated  audiences  without  stan- 
dards of  comparison  and  therefore  with  little 
appreciation  of  either  the  dramaturgic  art  or  the 
histrionic.  Like  Aristotle,  Lessing  had  grasped 
the  complex  nature  of  the  dramatic  art,  with  the 
necessary  correlations  of  playwright  and  player; 
and,  like  Aristotle  again,  he  never  thought  of  a 
drama  as  a  work  of  pure  literature  but  always  as 
something  intended  to  be  performed  by  actors, 
in  a  theater,  before  an  audience.  The  French 
imitations  Lessing  strove  to  eliminate  by  substi- 
^1  tution,Aby  providing  plays  of  his  own  which 

should  be  native  to  Germany  in  motive  and  in 
temper,  and  which  might  serve  as  the  founda- 
tion for  a  national  drama.  He  was  almost  as 
successful  in  this  constructive  effort  as  he  had 
been  in  his  destructive  labors. 

A  critic  Lessing  was,  no  doubt,  but  a  critic  who 

had  the  rare  ability  to  practise  what  he  preached. 

In  at  least  three  plays  he  revealed  himself  as  a 

true  dramatist,  as  a  man  who  had  mastered  the 

282 


THE   DRAMA   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY 

craft  of  play-making,  and  who  could  present  on 
the  stage  the  essential  scenes  of  a  struggle  be- 
tween contending  forces  embodied  in  vital  cha- 
racters. The  proof  of  the  play  is  in  the  acting 
always;  and  Lowell  did  not  hesitate  to  assert 
that  *  Minna  von  Barnhelm  '  and  '  Emilia  Galotti ' 
act  "  better  than  anything  of  Goethe  or  Schiller." 
In  justification  of  Lowell's  assertion  it  may  be 
noted  that  these  two  plays  are  nowadays  seen 
in  the  German  theaters  quite  as  often  as  any  two 
dramas  of  either  Goethe  or  Schiller. 

'  Emilia  Galotti '  and  *  Miss  Sara  Sampson '  are 
tragedies  of  middle-class  life,  tragedies  bour- 
geoises, owing  something  to  the  precept  of  Di- 
derot and  owing  perhaps  more  to  the  practice  of 
the  English  dramatists,  whom  Lessing  had  also 
admired.  Altho  his  style  is  noble  and  direct,  he  ^ 
is  not  primarily  a  poet,  with  the  poet's  instinctive 
happiness  in  finding  the  illuminative  phrase.  His 
culture,  his  formidable  instruction,  his  resolute 
thinking,  unite  to  give  certain  of  his  dramas  a 
richness  of  texture  uncommon  enough  in  popu- 
lar plays.  '  *  Minna  von  Barnhelm  '  is  a  comedy, 
not  tearful  exactly,  nor  yet  mirthful,  rather  cheer- 
ful, even  if  grave  in  spirit.  Lessing  was  scarcely 
ever  gay,  altho  he  could  be  witty  enough  on 
occasion.  His  dialog  has  sometimes  a  Gallic 
ease,  and  it  has  always  a  Teutonic  sincerity. 
285 


THE  DRAMA   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY 

'Minna'  is  the  best  of  his  plays;  it  is  brisk  in 
action,  lively  in  incident,  and  ingeniously  con- 
trived throughout. 

Perhaps  the  model  of  which  Lessing  availed 
himself  unconsciously  when  his  serious  plays 
were  taking  shape  in  his  mind,  was  that  sug- 
gested by  Moliere's  larger  and  later  comedies. 
But  with  his  practicality  and  his  perfect  com- 
prehension of  the  conditions  of  the  modern 
theater,  Lessing  made  one  important  modifica- 
tion in  the  form  of  drama  which  Moliere  had 
supplied.  Where  the  Frenchman,  dealing  only 
with  the  crisis  of  Tartuffe's  career  in  Orgon's 
house,  had  no  difficulty  in  concentrating  the  ac- 
tion into  a  single  day  and  a  single  spot,  the  Ger- 
man, rejecting  the  Unity  of  Time  and  the  Unity 
of  Place,  held  himself  at  liberty  to  protract  the 
action  over  so  long  a  period  as  he  might  find  ad- 
visable, and  to  change  the  scene  as  often  as  he 
might  see  fit.  But  Lessing  perceived  the  advan- 
tage of  not  distracting  the  attention  of  the  audi- 
ence by  changes  of  scene  during  the  progress  of 
the  act;  and  he  therefore  made  his  removals 
from  place  to  place  while  the  curtain  was  down. 
J.  /  He  was  apparently  the  first  playwright  who  gave 
to  each  act  its  own  scenery,  not  to  be  changed 
until  the  fall  of  the  curtain  again.  Here  he  sup- 
plied an  example  now  followed  by  the  most  ac- 
complished playwrights  of  the  twentieth  century 
284 


THE   DRAMA   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH    CENTURY 
VI 

In  this  avoiding  of  the  confusion  resulting  from 
frequent  shifting  of  the  scenery  before  the  eyes 
of  the  spectators,  Lessing  was  more  modern  than 
either  Goethe  or  Schiller,  both  of  whom— es- 
pecially in  their  earlier  dramatic  efforts,  in  the 
'  Goetz '  of  the  one  and  in  the  *  Robbers '  of  the 
other— appeared  to  hold  that  the  example  of 
Shakspere  warranted  their  returning  to  the  more 
medieval  practice  of  making  as  many  changes  of 
place  as  a  loosely  constructed  plot  might  seem  to 
require.  Lowell  suggested  that  there  was  "in  the 
national  character  an  insensibility  to  proportion  " 
which  would  "account  for  the  perpetual  groping 
of  German  imaginative  literature  after  some  for- 
eign mold  in  which  to  cast  its  thought  or  feeling, 
now  trying  a  Louis  Quatorze  pattern,  then  some- 
thing supposed  to  be  Shaksperian,  and  at  last 
going  back  to  ancient  Greece." 

Nowadays  Goethe's  surpassing  genius  is  every- 
where acknowledged,— his  comprehensive  and 
insatiable  curiosity,  his  searching  interrogation  of 
life,  his  power  of  self-expression  in  almost  every 
department  of  literature.  But  great  poet  as  he 
was,  a  theater-poet  he  was  not.  He  was  not 
a  born  playwright,  seizing  with  unconscious 
certainty  upon  the  necessary  scenes,  the  scenes  d 
faire,  to  bring  out  the  conflict  of  will  against  will 
285 


THE  DRAMA   IN  THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY 

which  was  the  heart  of  his  theme.  (  He  lacked 
the  instinctive  perception  of  the  exact  effect  likely 
to  be  produced  on  the  audience,  and  he  was  de- 
ficient in  the  intuitive  knowledge  of  the  best 
method  to  appeal  to  the  sympathies  of  the  spec- 
tators. In  fact,  the  time  came  in  Goethe's  career 
as  a  dramatic  poet  when  vhe  refused  to  reckon 
with  the  playgoers  Who  might  be  present  at  the 
performance  of  his  plays,  —an  attitude  inconcei- 
vable on  the  part  of  a  true  dramatist  and  as  re- 
mote as  possible  from  that  taken  by  Sophocles, 
by  Shakspere,  and  by  Moliere.  When  he  was 
director  of  the  theater  in  Weimar  he  did  not  hesi- 
tate to  assert  that  "the  public  must  be  con- 
trolled." A  more  enlightened  tyrant  than  Goethe 
no  theater  could  ever  hope  to  have;  and  yet 
little  more  than  sterility  and  emptiness  was  the 
net  result  of  his  theatrical  dictatorship  and  of 
his  refusal  to  consider  the  native  preferences  of 
the  Weimar  playgoers. 

It  was  Victor  Hugo  who  once  declared  that  the 
audience  in  a  theater  can  be  divided  into  three 
classes,— the  crowd  which  expects  to  see  action, 
women,  who  are  best  pleased  with  passion,  and 
thinkers,  who  are  hoping  to  behold  character. 
The  main  body  of  playgoers  has  always  wanted 
to  be  amused  by  the  spectacle  of  something  hap- 
pening before  their  eyes;  and  many  of  them, 
including  nearly  all  the  women,  desire  to  have 
286 


THE  DRAMA   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY 

their  sympathies  excited ;  but  it  is  only  a  chosen 
few  who  go  to  the  theater  seeking  food  for 
thought  and  ready,  therefore,  to  welcome  psycho- 
logic subtlety  an5  philosophic  profundity.  The 
great  dramatists  have  been  able  to  satisfy  the 
demands  of  all  three  classes;  and  *  Oedipus  the 
King,'  'Hamlet,'  and  '  Tartuffe '  were  popular 
with  the  plain  people  from  their  first  perform- 
ance. But  Goethe  seemed  to  care  for  the  approval 
of  only  the  smallest  class  of  the  three;  and  only 
in  '  Faust '  did  he  reveal  the  dramaturgic  skill 
needed  to  devise  an  action  interesting  enough  in 
itself  to  bear  whatever  burden  of  philosophy  he 
might  wish  to  lay  upon  it. 

Even  in  his  early  plays,  in  *  Goetz  von  Ber- 
lichingen,'  for  example,  in  which  there  is  action 
enough  and  emotion  also,  there  is  no  felicity  of 
stagecraft.  It  purports  only  to  be  a  chronicle- 
play;  but  altho  afterward  reshaped  for  the  stage, 
it  was  not  conceived  to  suit  the  conditions  of  the 
actual  theater.  'Clavigo,'  however,  which  is 
only  a  dramatized  anecdote,  an  unpretending 
improvisation,  swift  in  its  action  and  clear  in  its 
handling  of  contending  motives,  is  effective  on 
the  boards ;  and  as  a  stage-play  it  is  perhaps  the 
most  satisfactory  of  all  Goethe's  dramatic  at- 
tempts, trifle  as  it  is  after  all,  devoid  of  either 
poetry  or  philosophy.  *  Iphigenia  '  is  a  dramatic 
poem  rather  than  a  play;  and  '  Egmont'  is  little 
287 


THE   DRAMA   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY 

more  than  a  novel  in  dialog.  So  fraternal  a  critic 
as  Schiller  confessed  that  he  found  '  Iphigenia '  to 
be  wanting  in  "  the  sensuous  power,  the  life,  the 
agitation,  and  everything  which  specifically  be- 
longs to  a  dramatic  work."  But  if  final  proof  is 
needed  that  Goethe,  however  various  and  power- 
ful as  a  poet,  was  not  a  born  playwright,  it  can 
be  found,  outside  his  own  attempts  at  the  dra- 
matic form,  in  his  alteration  of  *  Romeo  and 
Juliet.'  In  this  he  not  only  modified  and  con- 
densed both  Mercutio  and  the  Nurse,  but  he  also 
substituted  a  tame  narrative  for  Shakspere's  skil- 
ful and  spirited  exposition  by  which  the  quarrel 
of  the  two  families  was  brought  bodily  before 
our  eyes. 

VII 

A  THEATER-POET  Schiller  was,  even  if  Goethe 
^  was  not;  yet  Schiller's  first  drama,  the  *  Robbers,' 

was  not  written  for  performance,— altho  it  soon 
found  its  way  to  the  stage-door,  after  the  poet 
had  somewhat  restrained  its  boyish  extravagance. 
Schiller  rejected  the  model  he  could  have  found 
in  Lessing's  tragedies  of  middle-class  life,  a  model 
too  severe  for  the  tumultuous  turbulence  of  the 
storm-and-stress  period.  He  followed  Goethe, 
who,  in '  Goetz,'  had  claimed  the  right  to  be  form- 
less as  Shakspere  was  supposed  to  be.  There  is 
in  the  *  Robbers '  a  certain  resemblance  to  the 
288 


X 


THE   DRAMA   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY 

crude  Elizabethan  tragedy-of-blood  with  its  per- 
fervid  grandiloquence  and  its  frequent  assassina- 
tion. 

In  this  first  play  Schiller's  stagecraft  was 
primitive  and  unworthy;  he  shifted  his  scenes 
with  wanton  carelessness,  and  he  let  his  absurd 
villain  turn  himself  inside  out  in  interminable  so- 
liloquies. But  however  reckless  the  technic,  the 
play  revealed  Schiller's  abundant  possession  of 
genuine  dramatic  power.  The  conflict  of  con- 
tending passions  was  set  before  the  spectator  in 
scenes  full  of  fire  and  action.  The  antithesis  of 
Moor's  two  sons,  one  strenuously  noble  and  the 
other  unspeakably  vile,  was  rather  forced,  but  it 
was  at  least  obvious  even  to  the  stupidest  play- 
goer. The  hero  lacked  common  sense,  no  doubt; 
but  he  had  energy  to  spare;  and  at  the  end  he 
rose  to  tragic  elevation  in  his  willingness  to  ex- 
piate his  wrong-doing. 

Dramatist  as  Schiller  was  by  native  gift,  he 
was  but  a  novice  in  the  theater  when  the  '  Rob- 
bers '  was  written,  and  it  was  the  fitting  of  that 
play  to  the  actual  stage  which  drew  his  attention 
to  the  inexorable  conditions  of  theatrical  per- 
formance. In  his  later  dramas,  in  *  William  Tell,' 
for  example,  and  in  '  Mary  Stuart,'  the  technic  is 
less  elementary  and  more  in  accord  with  the 
practice  of  the  contemporary  playhouse.  But 
Schiller  appears  to  have  been  thinking  rather  of 
289 


THE   DRAMA   IN   THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY 

his  readers  than  of  the  spectators  massed  and  ex- 
pectant in  the  theater.  He  seems  to  have  taken 
no  keen  interest  in  spying  out  the  secrets  of  the 
stage.  His  plays  are  what  they  are  by  sheer  dra- 
matic power,  and  not  by  reason  of  any  adroitness 
of  technic.  Indeed,  in  Schiller's  day  the  German 
theater  was  almost  in  chaos;  and  probably  he 
never  saw  a  satisfactory  performance  of  a  dra- 
matic masterpiece,  German  or  French  or  English, 
until  he  went  to  Weimar. 

Despite  his  limitations,  Schiller  was  the  one 
dramatic  poet  of  the  eighteenth  century ;  he  is  to 
be  compared,  not  with  Sophocles  and  Shakspere, 
the  supreme  masters,  but  rather  with  Calderon 
and  Hugo.  He  lacked  their  conscious  control  of 
theatrical  effect,  but  he  had  something  of  their 
rhetorical  luxuriance  and  their  exuberant  lyrism. 
He  was  intellectually  deeper  than  the  Spaniard  and 
he  was  more  masculine  than  the  Frenchman. 
Schiller's  influence  on  the  later  development  of  the 
drama  would  have  been  fuller  if  his  structure 
had  been  more  modern  and  if  he  had  profited 
earlier  by  the  example  of  Lessing,  emulating  the 
great  critic's  certainty  of  artistic  aim  and  imitating 
his  rigorous  self-control. 

But  self-control  was  rarely  a  characteristic  of 
German  poets  in  those  days  of  impending  cata- 
clysm.  Lessing  had  emancipated  his  countrymen 
from  the  tyranny  of  French  taste,  from  the  despot- 
290 


THE   DRAMA   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY 

ism  of  pseudo-classicism.  Other  despotisms  sur- 
vived in  Germany,  not  in  literature  but  in  life  itself; 
and  a  younger  generation  was  ardent  for  the  de- 
struction of  these  survivals  from  the  middle  ages. 
In  Lessing's  play  the  father  of  Emilia  Galotti  slew 
his  daughter  to  preserve  her  honor,  while  the  evil 
ruler  who  was  responsible  escaped  scot-free.  In 
*  Goetz '  and  in  the  '  Robbers '  the  aggrieved  hero 
was  ready  to  turn  outlaw  on  slight  provocation, 
and  to  revenge  individual  injuries  on  society  at 
large.  The  '  Robbers '  especially  had  the  super- 
saturated sentimentality  of  the  last  half  of  the 
eighteenth  century;  and  it  was  filled  with  the 
clamor  of  revolt,  which  was  to  reverberate  louder 
and  louder  throughout  Europe  until  at  last  the 
tocsin  tolled  in  the  streets  of  Paris  and  the  French 
Revolution  was  let  loose  to  sweep  away  feudalism 
forever. 

r  VIII 

'  The  most  of  the  German  dramas  of  this  period 
of  unrest  were  not  intended  for  the  actual  theater, 
altho  many  of  them  did  manage  to  get  them- 
selves acted  here  and  there.  With  all  their  wild 
bombast  and  with  all  their  overstrained  emo- 
tionalism, they  were  not  without  a  significance 
and  a  vitality  of  their  own,  a  freshness  of  self- 
expression  \vholly  lacking  on  the  German  stage 
before  Lessing  had  inspired  it.  If  these  dramas 
291 


THE  DRAMA   IN  THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY 

had  been  controlled  by  something  of  Lessing's 
self-restraint,  if  they  had  been  less  excessive  in 
their  violence,  they  might  have  afforded  shelter 
for  the  growth  of  a  dramatic  literature  native  to 
the  soil  and  national  in  spirit.  But  they  were  not 
healthy  enough,  and  they  soon  fell  into  decay; 
and  what  did  burgeon  from  their  matted  roots 
was  the  melodrama  of  Kotzebue,  with  its  exag- 
geration of  motive,  its  hollow  affectation,  and  its 
tawdry  pathos.  Kotzebue's  taste  is  dubious 
and  his  methods  are  now  outworn ;  but  his  play- 
making  gift  is  as  undeniable  as  that  of  Hey- 
wood  before  him  or  that  of  Scribe  after  him.) 
'Misanthropy  and  Repentance,'  known  in  Eng- 
lish as  the  *  Stranger,'  has  caused  as  many  tears 
to  flow  as  *A  Woman  Killed  with  Kindness'; 
and  whereas  Heywood's  simply  pathetic  play 
was  known  to  his  contemporaries  only  in  the 
land  of  its  language,  Kotzebue's  turgid  treatment 
of  the  same  theme  was  performed  in  all  the 
tongues  of  Europe,  in  Paris  and  London  and 
New  York  as  well  as  in  Vienna  and  Berlin. 

Melodrama  bears  much  the  same  relation  to 
tragedy  and  to  the  loftier  type  of  serious  play 
that  farce  does  to  pure  comedy.  When  we  can 
recall  more  readily  what  the  persons  of  a  play  do 
than  what  they  are,  then  the  probability  is  that 
the  piece  if  gay  is  a  farce,  and  if  grave  a  melo- 
drama. Even  among  the  tragedies  of  the  Greeks 
292 


THE  DRAMA   IN  THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY 

we  can  detect  more  than  one  drama  which  was 
melodramatic  rather  than  truly  tragic ;  and  not  a 
few  of  the  powerful  plays  of  the  Elizabethans 
were  essentially  melodramas.  So  also  were 
some  of  Corneille's,  tho  they  masqueraded  as 
tragedies  and  conformed  to  the  rules  of  the 
pseudo-classics.  Yet  it  was  only  in  the  eigh- 
teenth century  that  melodrama  plainly  differen- 
tiated itself  from  every  other  dramatic  species.  ' 
The  ''tradesmen's  tragedies"  of  Lillo  and 
i^  Moore  in  England  and  the  tearful-comedies  of  La 
Chaussee  and  Sedaine  in  France  had  helped  along 
its  development;  but  it  was  Kotzebue  in  Ger- 
many who  was  able  at  last  to  reveal  its  large 
possibilities.  In  the  pieces  which  the  German 
playwright  was  prolific  in  bringing  forth  there 
was  something  exactly  suited  to  the  temper  of 
the  times;  and, this  helped  to  make  his  vogue 
cosmopolitan.  He  was  the  earliest  play-maker 
whose  dramas  were  instantly  plagiarized  every- 
where; and  in  this  he  was  the  predecessor  of 
Scribe  and  Sardou.  He  influenced  men  like 
Lewis  in  England  and  like  Pixerecourt  and  Du- 
cange  in  France.  In  the  works  of  the  Parisian 
playwrights  there  was  a  deftness  of  touch  not 
visible  in  the  pieces  of  Kotzebue,  who  was 
heavy-handed;  as  Amiel  once  suggested,  it  is 
not  unusual  to  see  "the  Germans  heap  the  fag- 
ots for  the  pile,  the  French  bring  the  fire."  It 
293 


THE  DRAMA   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY 

was  this  French  modification  of  eighteenth  cen- 
tury German  melodrama  which  was  to  serve  as 
a  model  for  French  romanticist  drama  in  the 
nineteenth  century. 

A  century  is  only  an  artificial  period  of  time 
adopted  for  the  sake  of  convenience  and  corre- 
sponding to  no  logical  division  of  literary  history. 
None  the  less  are  we  able  to  perceive  in  one  cen- 
tury or  in  another  certain  marked  characteristics. 
No  doubt  every  century  is  more  or  less  an  era 
of  transition ;  but  surely  the  eighteenth  century 
seems  to  deserve  the  description  better  than 
most.  For  nearly  three  quarters  of  its  career,  it 
appears  to  us  prosaic  in  many  of  its  aspects, 
dull  and  gray  and  uninteresting;  but  it  was  ever 
a  battle-ground  for  contending  theories  of  litera- 
ture and  of  life.  In  the  drama  more  especially  jt 
was  able  to  behold  the  establishment  and  the 
disestablishment  of  pseudo-classicism. 

At  its  beginning  the  influence  of  the  French 
had  won  wide-spread  acceptance  for  the  rules 
with  their  insistence  on  the  Three  Unities  and  on 
the  separation  of  the  comic  and  the  tragic.  At 
its  end  every  rule  was  being  violated  wantonly^ 
and  the  drama  itself  seemed  almost  as  lawless  as 
the  bandits  it  delighted  in  bringing  on  the  stage 
so  abundantly.  Throughout  Europe,  except  in 
France,  the  theater  had  broken  its  bonds;  and 
even  in  France,  the  last  stronghold  of  the  theorists, 
294 


THE  DRAMA   IN  THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY 

freedom  was  to  come  early  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. Lessing  had  undermined  the  fortress  of 
pseudo-classicism ;  and  the  walls  of  its  last  citadel 
were  to  fall  with  a  crash  at  the  first  blast  on  the 
trumpet  of  Hernani. 


295 


IX.    THE  DRAMA  IN  THE  NINETEENTH 
CENTURY 

I 

THE  dawn  of  the  nineteenth  century  was 
illumined  by  the  last  flickers  of  the  red 
torch  of  the  French  Revolution;  and  its  earlier 
years  were  filled  with  the  reverberating  cannon- 
ade of  the  Napoleonic  conquests.  It  was  not 
until  after  Waterloo  that  the  battle-field  of  Europe 
became  only  a  parade-ground ;  and/  this  is  per- 
haps one  reason  why  there  was /a  dearth  of 
dramatic  literature  in  the  first  quarter  of  the  cen- 
tury and  why  no  dramatist  of  prominence  flour- 
ished,—excepting  only  the  gentle  Grillparzer  far 
away  in  Vienna.  In  war-time  the  theaters  are 
filled  often  enough,  but  the  entertainment  they 
proffer  then  is  rarely  worthy  of  the  hour.  Altho 
the  drama  must  deal  directly  with  a  contest  of 
human  souls,  it  does  not  flourish  while  there  is 
actual  fighting  absorbing  the  attention  of  the 
multitude;  but  when  great  captains  and  their 
drums  depart,  then  are  the  stronger  spirits  again 
attracted  to  the  stage. 

296 


THE  DRAMA   IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

Despite  their  survival  in  the  Austrian  theaters 
Grillparzer's  pleasing  plays  are  no  one  of  them 
epoch-making;  altho  they  had  more  life  in  them 
than  the  closet-dramas  upon  which  British  bards 
like  Byron  and  Shelley  were  then  misdirecting 
their  efforts.  Throughout  Europe  during  the 
first  score  years  of  the  century  the(acted  drama  • 
was  for  the  most  part  frankly  unliterary  and  the 
so-called  literary  drama  was  plainly  unactable,^ 
proving  itself  pitifully  ineffective  whenever  it 
chanced  to  be  put  on  the .  stage.  ( In  Germany 
the  more  popular  plays  were  either  sentimental 
or  melodramatic  I  and  sometimes  they  were  both. 
(^  In  England  the  more  serious  dramas  were  fre- 
quently adapted  or  imitated  from  the  German,  ) 
while  the  comic  plays  —  like  those  of  the  younger 
Colman  —  were  often  little  better  than  helter- 
skelter  patchworks  of  exaggerated  incident  and 
contorted  caricature,  f  In  France  tragedy  was 
being  strangled  in  the  tightening  bonds  imposed 
by  the  classicist  rules;  and  comedy  was  panting 
vainly  for  a  larger  freedom  of  theme  and  of  treat- 
ment. But  even  in  France  help  was  at  hand; 
and  in  certain  Parisian  theaters,  wholly  without 
literary  pretensions,  two  species  were  growing 
to  maturity,  destined  each  of  them  to  reinvigorate 
the  more  literary  drama. 

One    species   was  the  comddie-vaudeville  of 
Scribe,  with  its  attempt  to  enchain  the  interest 
297 


THE   DRAMA   IN   THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

of  the  Spectator  by  an  artfully  increasing  intricacy 
of  plot;  and  the  other  was  the  melodrama  of 
Pixerecourt  and  Ducange,  derived  more  or  less 
directly  from  the  emotional  drama  of  Kotzebue, 
but  depending  not  so  much  on  the  depicting  of 
passion  as  on  the  linking  together  of  startling 
situations  at  once  unexpected  by  the  spectator 
and  yet  carefully  prepared  for  by  the  playwright. 
'  Thirty  Years  of  a  Gambler's  Life '  is  a  typical 
example  of  this  French  melodrama,  none  the  less 
typical  that  one  of  its  most  striking  incidents  had 
been  borrowed  from  a  German  play.  The  com^- 
die-vaudeville  and  the  melodrama  of  the  boule- 
vard theaters  were  fortunately  fettered  by  no 
rules,  obeying  only  the  one  law,  that  they  had  to 
please  the  populace.  They  grew  up  sponta- 
neously and  abundantly;  they  were  heedlessly 
unliterary;  they  were  curbed  by  no  criticism, — 
which  was  never  wasted  by  the  men-of-letters 
on  these  species  of  the  drama,  deemed  quite  be- 
neath their  notice. 

The  comedie-vaudeville  of  Scribe  and  the  melo- 
drama of  Pixerecourt  were  alike  in  that  they 
both  were  seeking  success  by  improving  the 
mere  mechanism  of  play-making  and  in  that  they 
both  were  willing  to  sacrifice  everything  else  to 
sheer  ingenuity  of  structure.  Unpretending  as 
was  each  of  the  two  species,  its  popularity  was 
undeniable;  it  accomplished  its  purpose  satisfac- 
298 


THE   DRAMA   IN   THE  NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

torily ;  and  it  needed  only  to  be  accepted  by  the 
men-of-letters  and  to  be  endowed  with  the  liter- 
ature it  lacked.  Nothing  is  more  striking  in  the 
history  of  the  French  drama  of  the  first  quarter 
^of  the  century  than  the  contrast  between  the 
I  sturdy  vitality  of  these  two  unliterary  species, 
xomedie-vaudeville  and  melodrama,  and  the  ane- 
mic lethargy  of  the  more  literary  comedy  and 
tragedy.  The  fires  of  the  Revolution  had  flamed 
up  fiercely,  and  the  French,  having  cast  out  the 
Ancient  Regime,  had  remade  the  map  of  Europe 
regardless  of  vested  rights;  but  in  the  theater 
they  were  still  in  the  bonds  of  the  pseudo-classi- 
cism which  had  been  rejected  everywhere  else, 
even  in  Germany.  Comedy,  as  it  was  then  com- 
posed by  the  adhWents  of  the  classicist  theories, 
was  thin  and  feeble,  painfully  trivial  and  elabo- 
rately wearisome;  and  tragedy,  as  the  classicist 
poets  continued  to  perpetrate  it,  was  even  more 
artificial  and  void.  In  fact,  so  far  as  classicism 
was  concerned,  comedy  was  moribund  and  tra- 
gedy was  defunct,  even  tho  they  neither  of  them 
suspected  it. 

Now,  as  we  look  back  across  the  years,  we 
cannot  but  wonder  why  the  task  of  ousting  the 
dying  and  the  dead  should  have  seemed  so  ardu- 
ous or  have  caused  so  much  commotion.  We 
marvel  why  there  was  need  of  a  critical  manifesto 
like  Victor  Hugo's  preface  to  his  *  Cromwell '  or 
299 


THE   DRAMA   IN   THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

of  a  critical  controversy  over  the  difference  be- 
tween the  Classic  and  the  Romantic.  Even  then 
it  ought  to  have  been  easily  evident  that  there 
was  nothing  classic  about  the  comedies  and  the 
tragedies  which  continued  to  be  composed  labo- 
riously in  accordance  with  the  alleged  rules  of  the 
theater;  and  even  the  defenders  of  the  traditional 
faith  might  have  suspected  that  there  was  really 
nothing  sacrosanct  about  mere  pseudo-classicism. 
But  few  on  either  side  could  see  clearly.  The 
classicist  deemed  himself  to  be  defending  the 
holy  cause  of  Art  against  a  band  of  irreverent  out- 
laws, striving  to  capture  the  temple  of  taste  that 
they  might  debase  the  standards  and  defile  the 
sanctuary.  The  romanticist  swept  forward  reck- 
y  lessly  to  the  assault,  proclaiming  that  he  had  re- 
discovered Truth,  which  had  been  buried,  and 
boasting  that  he  was  to  revive  Art,  which  had 
long  lain  asleep  awaiting  his  arrival.  Tho  the 
defenders  stood  to  their  guns  valiantly,  and  tho 
they  asserted  their  intention  of  dying  in  the  last 
ditch,  they  never  had  a  chance  against  their  su- 
perb besiegers, —  ardent  young  fellows,  all  of 
them,  sons  of  soldiers,  begotten  between  two 
battles  and  cradled  to  the  mellow  notes  of  the 
bugle.  For  nearly  twoscore  years  the  French 
people  had  made  a  profuse  expenditure  of  energy ; 
and  the  time  was  ripe  for  a  new  birth  of  the 
French  drama. 

300 


THE   DRAMA   IN   THE   NINETEENTH    CENTURY 

/ 

The  younger  generation  abhorred  the  artifi- 
ciality and  the  emptiness  of  the  plays  presented 
at  the  Theatre  Fran^ais ;  and  they  were  bitter  in 
denouncing  the  absurdity  of  the  rules.  Like  all 
literary  reformers,  they  proclaimed  a  return  to  na- 
ture ;  and  they  asserted  their  right  to  represent 
life  as  they  saw  it^  in  its  ignoble  aspects  as  well 
as  in  its  nobler  manifestations.  They  claimed 
freedom  to  range  through  time  and  space  at  will, 
to  mingle  humor  and  pathos,  to  ally  the  grotesque 
with  the  terrible,  and  to  take  for  a  hero  an  out- 
cast of  the  middle  ages  instead  of  a  monarch  of 
antiquity. 

But  a  critical  controversy  like  this  with  its  spec- 
tacular interchange  of  hurtling  epithets  need  have 
little  effect  upon  the  actual  theater.  Even  in 
Paris  the  bulk  of  the  playgoers  cared  little  or 
nothing  about  the  artistic  precepts  which  a  dra- 
matist might  accept  or  reject;  it  was  only  his 
practice  that  concerned  them.  If  his  plays  seized 
their  attention,  holding  them  interested  and  re- 
leasing them  satisfied  that  they  had  enjoyed  the 
pleasure  proper  to  the  theater, —  then  his  princi- 
ples might  be  what  he  pleased.  They  neither 
knew  nor  cared  what  party  he  might  belong  to 
or  what  rules  he  might  hold  binding.  And  here 
the  broad  public  showed  its  usual  common  sense, 
301 


THE   DRAMA    IN   THE   NINETEENTH    CENTURY 

which  prompts  it  ever  to  refuse  to  be  amused  by 
what  it  does  not  really  find  amusing.  The  play- 
goers as  a  body  wanted  in  France  early  in  the 
nineteenth  century  what  they  had  wanted  in  Spain 
and  in  England  early  in  the  seventeenth  century, 
—  and  what,  indeed,  the  playgoers  as  a  body  want 
now  in  the  twentieth  century,  what  they  always 
have  wanted  and  what  they  always  will  want. 
What  this  is  Victor  Hugo  has  told  us:  they  want, 
first  of  all,  action ;  then  they  crave  the  display  of 
passion  to  excite Jhdrj^jmipathy ;  and  finally  they 
relish  the  depicting  of  JiuLnian.,nature,  to  satisfy 
man's  eternal  curiosity  about  himself. 

These  wants  the  old  fogies  of  pseu^io-classi- 
cism  did  not  understand,  and  this  is  why  the  pub- 
lic received  with  avidity  the  earlier  plays  of  the  ro- 
manticists with  their  abundant  movement,  their 
vivacity,  their  color,  and  their  sustaining  emotion.) 
Alexander  Dumas  came  first  with  '  Henri  III  et 
sa  Cour ' ;  Alfred  de  Vigny  followed  speedily  with 
his  spirited  arrangement  of  '  Othello ' ;  and  at  last 
Victor  Hugo  assured  the  triumph  of  the  move- 
ment, when  he  brought  out  *  Hernani '  with  its 
picturesqueness  of  scenery,  its  constant  succes- 
sion of  striking  episodes,  its  boldly  contrasted  cha- 
racters and  its  splendidly  lyrical  verse.  Significant 
it  is  that  Hugo  and  Dumas  were  both  of  them 
sons  of  Revolutionary  generals,  while  Vigny  was 
himself  a  soldier.  Dumas  increased  the  impres- 
302 


THE   DRAMA   IN   THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

sion  of  his  early  play  by  producing  the  *  Tour  de 
Nesle'  and  'Antony/  marvels  of  play-making 
skill  both  of  them,  and  surcharged  with  passion. 
Vigny  won  attention  again  with  his  delicate  and 
plaintive  *  Chatterton.'  Hugo  put  forth  a  succes- 
sion of  plays  in  verse  and  in  prose,  all  of  them 
challenging  admiration  by  qualities  rarely  united 
in  a  dramatist's  work,  and  yet  no  one  of  them 
establishing  itself  in  popular  favor  by  the  side  of 
*  Hernani,'  excepting  only  *  Ruy  Bias.' 

The  flashing  brilliancy  of  ^Hugo's  versification 
blinded  many  spectators  for  a  brief  season  and 
prevented  most  of  them  from  seeing  what  was 
made  plain  at  last  only  by  an  analysis  of  the 
plays  in  prose,  '  Mary  Tudor,'  for  example.  When 
no  gorgeously  embroidered  garment  draped  the 
meager  skeleton  it  was  not  difficult  to  discover 
that  Victor  Hugo  was  not  a  great  dramatic  poet, 
*'  of  the  race  and  lineage  of  Shakspere."  ,  A  great 
poet  he  was  beyond  all  question,  perhaps  the 
greatest  poet  of  the  century -/but  his  gift  was 
lyric  and  not  dramatic. )  He  was  a  lyrist  of  in- 
comparable vigor,  variety,  and  sonority ;  and  as  a 
lyrist  he. had  often  an  almost  epic  amplitude  of,  „ 
vision.  As  a  dramatist  his  outlook  was  narrow 
and  petty;  he  could  not  conceive  boldly  a  lofty 
theme,  treating  it  with  the  unfailing  simplicity  of 
the  masters.  His  subjects  were  lacking  in  nobil- 
ity, in  dignity,  in  stateliness.  His  plots  were 
303 


THE   DRAMA   IN   THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

violent  and  extravagant;  and  his  characters  were 
as  forced  as  his  situations.  The  poetry  to  be 
found  in  his  plays  is  external  rather  than  internal; 
it  is  almost  an  afterthought.  Under  the  lyrical 
drapery  which  is  so  deceptive  at  first,  there  is  no 
more  than  a  melodrama. 

Melodrama  for  melodrama,  '  Hernani '  and  *  Ruy 
Bias,'  fascinating  as  they  are,  seem  now  to  be 
less  easily  and  less  spontaneously  devised  than 
*  Antony  '  and  the  *  Tour  de  Nesle.'  Durpas  was 
/  a  born  playwright  with  an  instinctive  felicity  in 
handling  situation ;  and  Hugo,  altho  he  was  able, 
by  dint  of  hard  work  and  by  sheer  cleverness,  to 
make  plays  that  could  pleas^  in  the  theater,  had 
far  less  of  the  native  faculty.  In  their  play-mak- 
ing both  Hugo  and  Dumas  were  pupils  of  Pixere- 
courtandDucange;  and  *  Hernani '  and  'Antony' 
do  not  differ  greatly  in  kind  from  *  Thirty  Years 
of  a  Gambler's  Life,'  however  superior  they  may 
be  in  power,  in  vitality,  and,  above  all,  in  style. 
What  Dumas  and  Hugo  did  was  little  more  than 
to  take  the  melodrama  of  the  boulevard  theaters 
and  to  make  literature  of  it,  —  just  as  Marlowe 
had  taken  the  unpretending  but  popular  chronicle- 
play  as  the  model  of  his  'Edward  II.' 

The   French    playwrights   who  supplied    the 

stage  of  the  boulevard  theaters   had  borrowed 

from  the  German  playwrights  of  the  storm-and- 

stress  a  habit  for  choosing  for  a  hero  an  outcast 

304 


THE   DRAMA    IN   THE   NINETEENTH    CENTURY 

or  an  outlaw.  Here  again  they  were  followed 
by  the  dramatists  of  the  romanticist  movement, 
who  were  forever  demanding  sympathy  for  the 
bandit  and  the  bastard, —  Hernani  was  the  one 
and  Antony  was  the  other.  A  note  of  revolt 
rang  through  the  French  theater  in  the  second 
quarter  of  the  century;  a  cry  of  protest  agai/ist 
the  social  order  echoed  from  play  to  play.  (  In 
their  reaction  against  the  restrictions  which  the 
classicists  had  insisted  upon,  the  romanticists 
went  beyond  liberty  almost  to  license,  and  they 
did  not  always  stop  short  of  licentiousness.  They 
posed  as  defenders  of  the  rights  of  the  individual 
against  the  tyranny  of  custom,  and  thus  they  were 
led  to  glorify  a  selfish  and  lawless  egotism.  There 
was  truth  in  the  remark  of  a  keen  French  critic  that 
the  communism  of  187 1  was  the  logical  successor 
of  the  romanticism  of  1830.  To  say  this  is  to 
suggest  that  the  foundation  of  romanticism  was 
unsound  and  unstable.  As  a  whole,  romanticism 
was  destructive  only ;  it  had  no  strength  for  con- 
struction. When  it  had  swept  classicism  aside 
and  cleared  the  ground,  then  its  work  was  done, 
and  all  that  was  left  for  it  to  do  was  itself  to  die. 


Ill 


Of  all  the  manifold  influences  that  united  to 
to\ 
305 


(reinvigorate  the  drama  toward  the  middle  of  the 


THE  DRAMA   IN   THE   NINETEENTH    CENTURY 

century,  the  most  powerful  was  that  of  prose- 
fiction.  In  France  more  particularly  no  stimulant 
was  more  potent  than  the  series  of  realistic  in- 
vestigations into  the  conditions  and  the  results 
of  modern  life  which  Balzac  comprehensively 
entitled  the  '  Human  Comedy.'  The  novel  is  the 
department  of  literature  which  was  as  character- 
istic of  the  nineteenth  century  as  the  drama  was 
of  the  seventeenth ;  and  only  in  the  nineteenth 
was  the  novel  able  to  establish  its  right  to  be 
considered  as  a  worthy  rival  of  the  drama.  Until 
after  Scott  had  taken  all  Europe  captive,  the  atti- 
tude of  the  novelist  was  as  apologetic  and  depre- 
catory as  the  attitude  of  the  playwright  had  been 
while  Sidney  was  pouring  forth  his  contempt  for 
the  acted  drama  of  his  own  day.  In  the  eigh- 
teenth century,  when  it  ought  to  have  been  evi- 
dent that  the  drama  was  no  longer  at  its  best, 
the  tradition  of  its  supremacy  survived  and  it  was 
still  believed  to  be  the  sole  field  for  the  first  ven- 
tures of  ambitious  authors.  Men-of-letters  as 
dissimilar  as  Johnson  and  Smollett,  both  of  them 
hopelessly  unfit  for  the  theater,  went  up  to  Lon- 
don, each  with  a  dull  tragedy  in  his  pocket. 
Steele  and  Fielding  in  England,  like  Lesage  and 
Marivaux  in  France,  were  writers  of  plays  to  be 
performed  on  the  stage,  long  before  they  conde- 
scended to  be  depicters  of  character  for  the  mere 
reader  by  the  fireside. 

306 


THE   DRAMA   IN   THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

For  years  the  novel  was  conceived  almost  in  the 
manner  of  a  play,  with  its  characters  talking  and 
acting,  projected  forward  and  detached  from  their 
surroundings,  as  tho  they  were  appearing  upon 
an  isolated  platform,  scant  of  scenery  and  bare  of 
furniture.  The  personages  of  prose-fiction  were 
not  related  to  their  environment  nor  were  they 
shown  as  component  parts  of  the  multitude  that 
peopled  the  rest  of  the  world.  Only  after  Rous- 
seau had  sent  forth  the  '  New  Helo'ise '  was  there 
disclosed  in  fiction  any  alliance  between  nature 
and  human  nature;  and 'only  after  Bernardin  de 
Saint-Pierre  had  issued  '  Paul  and  Virginia '  did 
the  story-teller  begin  to  find  his  profit  in  the 
landscape  and  the  weather,  in  sunsets  and  rain- 
storms and  the  mystery  of  the  dawn,  all  phe- 
nomena not  easily  represented  in  the  playhouse. 

The  novelist  was  long  held  to  be  inferior  to  the 
dramatist,  and  his  pay  was  inferior  also.  But 
when  by  his  resplendent  improvisations  Scott 
was  able  to  settle  with  his  creditors,  the  Euro- 
pean men-of-letters  were  made  aware  that  prose- 
fiction  might  be  as  profitable  as  play-writing. 
They  knew  already  that  it  was  far  easier,  since  the 
technic  of  the  novel  seems  liberty  itself  when 
contrasted  with  the  rigid  economy  of  the  drama. 
The  task  appeared  to  be  simpler  and  the  imme- 
diate reward  appeared  to  be  larger,  so  that  the 
temptation  became  irresistible  for  young  men  to 
307 


THE   DRAMA   IN  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

adventure  themselves  in  the  narrative  form  rather 
than  the  dramatic.  Yet  not  a  few  of  those  who 
took  to  fiction  were  naturally  more  qualified  for 
success  in  the  theater, —  Dickens,  for  instance; 
and  many  of  those  who  had  won  triumphs  as 
playwrights  sought  also  to  receive  the  reward 
of  the  story-teller, —  Hugo  for  one  and  the  elder 
Dumas  for  another. 

During  the  middle  fifty  years  of  the  century  it 
r  was  only  in  French  that  the  drama  was  able  to 
hold  its  own  as  a  department  of  literature;  and 
in  every  other  language ^it  was  speedily  oversha- 
dowed by  prose-fiction.  Bold  and  powerful  as 
the  French  novelists  were,  they  had  as  competi- 
tors playwrights  of  an  almost  equal  brilliancy, 
variety,  and  force.  In  French  the  drama  and  the 
prose-fiction  were  vigorous  rivals  for  threescore 
years.  But  in  German  literature,  in  Italian  and 
Spanish,  the  novel  during  this  same  period  was 
at  least  the  equal  of  the  drama,  whatever  its  own 
demerits ;  and  in  English  literature  the  superiority 
of  prose-fiction  was  overwhelming.  In  fact,  dur- 
ing the  second  and  third  quarters  of  the  century 
the  acted  play  in  English  had  rarely  more  than 
a  remote  connection  with  literature,  whereas  the 
novel  was  absorbing  an  undue  proportion  of 
the  literary  ability  of  the  peoples  speaking  the 
language. 

This  immense  expansion  of  prose-fiction,  and 
308 


THE  DRAMA   IN   THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

its  incessant  endeavor  to  avail  itself  of  the  devices 
of  all  the  other  forms  of  literary  art,  will  prove  to 
be,  perhaps,  the  most  salient  fact  in  the  history 
of  literature  in  the  nineteenth  century.  But^the 
future  historian  will  be  able  to  see  clearly  tha^  the 
obscuring  of  the  drama  was  temporary  only,  and 
that  even  tho,  outside  of  France,  dramatic  litera- 
ture might  seem  to  have  gone  into  a  decline,  it 
bade  fair  to  be  restored  to  health  again  in  the  final 
quarter  of  the  century.  The  historian  will  have  to 
indicate  also  the  points  of  contact  between  the 
novel  and  the  play  and  to  dwell  on  the  constant 
interaction  of  the  one  and  the  other, —  an  interac- 
tion as  old  as  the  origin  of  epic  and  tragic  poetry. 
It  is  to  be  seen  in  English,  for  example,  in  the 
influence  of  the  contemporary  farces  and  melo- 
dramas of  the  London  stage  upon  the  incidents 
of  Dickens's  serial  tales. 

It  is  to  be  seen  in  French  also,  of  course;  just 
as  Lesage  and  Fielding  had  applied  to  their  narra- 
tives the  method  of  character-drawing  which  they 
had  borrowed  from  Moliere,  so  Augier  and  the 
younger  Dumas  were  directed  in  their  choice  of 
subject  by  the  towering  example  of  Balzac.  The 
Elizabethan  playwrights  had  treated  the  Italian 
story-tellers  as  storehouses  of  plots  and  motives, 
of  incidents  and  intrigues.  But  the  Parisian  dra- 
matists of  the  Second  Empire  were  under  a  deeper 
debt  to  the  great  novelist  who  had  been  their 
309 


THE   DRAMA    IN   THE   NINETEENTH    CENTURY 

contemporary;  it  was  to  him  that  they  owed, 
in  a  great  measure,  their  quicker  interest  in 
the  problems  of  society.  They  had  not  Bal- 
zac's piercing  vision  into  the  secrets  of  the 
heart,  but  they  at  least  sought  to  face  life  from 
a  point  of  view  not  unlike  his. 


IV 

Obvious  as  is  the  influence  of  Balzac  upon 
Augier  and  the  younger  Dumas,  especially  in 
their  later  studies  into  social  conditions,  it  is  not 
more  obvious  or  more  powerful  than  the  influence 
of  Scribe.  While  the  romanticists  had  been  driv- 
ing out  the  classicists,  and  exhausting  them- 
selves in  the  vain  effort  to  establish  their  own 
sterile  formulas,  Scribe  had  gone  on  his  own  way, 
wholly  unaffected  by  their  theories  or  by  their 
temporary  vogue.  He  had  been  elaborating  his 
technic  until  he  was  able  to  sustain  the  spacious 
framework  of  a  five-act  comedy  by  means  of 
devices  invented  for  use  in  the  pettier  comedie- 
vaudeville.  In  almost  every  department  of  the 
drama,  including  the  librettos  of  grand  opera  and 
of  opera-comique,  [  Scrib^  proved  himself  to  be  a 
consummate  master  of  the  art  and  mystery  of 
^  play-making.  He  devoted  himself  to  perfecting 
the  mechanics  of  dramaturgy;  and  he  has  sur- 
vived as  the  type  of  the  playwright  pure  and 
310 


THE  DRAMA   IN   THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

simple,  to  be  remembered  by  the  side  of  Hey- 
wood  and  Kotzebue.  , 

His  plays,  like  so  rfiany  of  theirs,  are  now  out- 
worn and  demoded.  He  is  inferior  to  Kotzebue  Y 
in  affluent  emotion  and  to  Hey  wood  in  occasional 
pathos ;  but  he  is  superior  to  both  in  sheer  stage- 
craft. The  hundred  volumes  of  his  collected 
writings  may  be  consulted  for  proof  that  a  play 
can  serve  its  purpose  in  the  theater  and  still  have 
little  relation  to  literature  —  and  even  less  to  life. 
His  best  play,  whatever  it  may  be,  was  a  plot  and  n{ 
nothing  more,  a  story  in  action,  so  artfully  articu- 
lated that  it  kept  the  spectators  guessing  until  the 
final  fall  of  the  curtain, —  and  never  caused  them 
to  think  after  they  had  left  the  theater. 

Yet  there  were  very  few  playwrights  of  the 
second  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  who  had 
not  been  more  or  less  influenced  by  Scribe,  and 
who  did  not  find  it  difficult  to  release  themselves 
from  their  bondage  to  him.  Even  Augier  and 
the  younger  Dumas,  while  the  content  of  their 
social  dramas  was  in  some  measure  suggested  to 
them  by  Balzac,  went  to  Scribe  for  their  form; 
and  what  now  seems  most  old-fashioned  in 
the  *  Gendre  de  M.  Poirier '  and  in  the  *  Demi- 
monde' is  a  superingenuity  in  the  handling  of 
the  intrigue.  No  small  part  of  the  wilful  form- 
lessness of  the  French  drama  in  the  final  quarter 
of  the  century  was  due  to  the  violence  of  the 
311 


THE   DRAMA   IN   THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

reaction  against  the  methods  of  this  master- 
mechanician  of  the  modern  theater.  Even  thought- 
less playgoers  began  in  time  to  weary  of  the 
** well-made"  play,  with  its  sole  dependence  on 
the  artificial  adroitness  of  its  structure,  with  its 
stereotyped  psychology,  its  minimum  of  passion, 
its  humdrum  morality,  and  its  absence  of  ve- 
racity. But  at  the  height  of  its  popularity  the 
** well-made"  play  was  the  model  for  most  of 
the  playwrights,  not  of  France  only  but  bf  the 
rest  of  Europe;'  and  there  was  scarcely  a  modern 
language  in  which  Scribe's  pieces  had  not  been 
translated  and  adapted,  imitated  and  plagiarized. 
It  was  in  the  second  quarter  of  the  century 
that  Scribe  attained  the  apex  of  success  at  the 
very  hour  when  the  romanticists  were  exube- 
rantly triumphant;  and  it  may  sound  like  a  para- 
dox to  suggest  that  it  was  the  luxuriant  abun- 
dance of  the  drama  in  French  that  helped  to 
bring  about  its  decline  in  the  other  languages; 
but  this  is  no  more  than  the  truth.  At  the  mo- 
ment when  the  comparative  facility  of  prose- 
fiction  was  alluring  men-of-letters  away  from  the 
theater,  the  dramatists  outside  of  France  had  their 
already  precarious  reward  suddenly  diminished 
by  the  rivalry  of  cheap  adaptations  from  the 
French.  There  was  then  neither  international 
copyright  nor  international  stageright;  and 
French  plays  could  be  acted  in  English  and  in 
312 


THE   DRAMA   IN   THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

German,  in  Italian  and  in  Spanish,  without  the  au- 
thor's consent  and  without  any  payment  to  him. 

As  it  happened,  the  French  drama  was  then  of 
a  kind  easily  exportable  and  adaptable.  The 
plays  of  the  romanticists  dealt  with  passion  rather 
than  with  character;  and  emotion  has  universal 
currency.  The  "well-made  "  plays  of  Scribe  and 
his  numberless  followers  in  France  dealt  with 
situations  only;  and  their  clockwork  would 
strike  just  as  well  in  London  or  New  York  as  in 
Paris.  The  '  Tour  de  Nesle '  and  the  *  Bataille  de 
Dames'  could  be  carried  anywhere  with  little 
loss  of  effect.  Few  of  the  emotional  plays  or  the 
mechanical  comedies  had  any  pronounced  flavor 
of  the  soil;  and  they  could  be  relished  by  Rus- 
sian spectators  as  well  as  by  Australian.  But  no 
foreigner  can  really  appreciate  a  comedy  wherein 
the  author  aims  at  a  profound  study  of  the  society 
he  sees  all  around  him  in  his  own  country;  and 
this  is  why  the  '  Femmes  Savantes '  of  Moliere 
and  the  *  Efifrontes '  of  Augier  are  little  known 
beyond  the  boundaries  of  the  French  language, 
while  the  '  Stranger '  of  Kotzebue  and  the  '  Adri- 
enne  Lecouvreur '  of  Scribe  have  had  their  hour  of 
popularity  everywhere  the  wide  world  over. 

So  long  as ;  the  theatrical  managers  of  the  Ger- 
man and  Italian  principalities,  as  well  as  those  of 
Great  Britain  and  the  United  States,  could  borrow        \ 
a  successful  French  play  whenever  they  needed  a 
3>3 


THE   DRAMA   IN   THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

novelty,  without  other  payment  than  the  cost  of 
translation,  they  were  naturally  disinclined  to 
proffer  tempting  remuneration  for  untried  pieces 
by  writers  of  their  own  tongue.  This  was  an 
added  reason  why  men-of-letters  kept  turning 
from  the  drama  to  prose-fiction,  the  rewards  of 
which  were  just  then  becoming  larger  than  ever 
before,  as  the  boundless  possibilities  of  serial  pub- 
lication were  discovered,  whereby  the  story- 
teller could  get  paid  twice  for  one  work. 


When  we  consider  that  novel-writing  is  not 
only  easier  than  play-writing,  but  that  the  novelist 
had  the  advantage  of  a  double  market,  while  the 
dramatist  was  then  forced  to  vend  his  wares  in 
competition  with  stolen  goods,  we  need  not  be 
surprised  that  the  drama  apparently  went  into  a 
decline  during  the  middle  years  of  the  century 
everywhere  except  in  France.  The  theater  might 
seem  to  flourish,  but  the  stage  was  supplied 
chiefly  with  plays  filched  from  the  French  and 
twisted  into  conformity  with  local  conditions. 
As  most  of  these  hasty  adaptations  had  no 
possible  relation  to  the  realities  of  life,  there  was 
no  call  for  literary  quality;  and  thus  it  was  that 
there  impended  an  unfortunate  divorce  between 
literature  and  the  drama. 
3»4 


.^ 


THE   DRAMA   IN  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

By  the  ill-advised  action  of  certain  English 
poets  the  breach  between  the  stage  and  the  men- 
of-letters  was  made  to  appear  wider  than  it 
ought  to  have  been.  These  poets  fell  victims  to 
the  heresy  of  the  so-called  closet-drama>  which 
all  who  apprehend  the  true  principles  of  the 
drama  cannot  but  hold  to  be  only  bon  a  mettre 
au  cabinet,  as  Moliere  phrased  it.  Averting  their 
countenances  from  the  actual  theater  of  their 
own  time,  the  English  poets  followed  out  Lamb's 
whimsical  suggestion  and  'tried  to  write  for  an- 
tiquity.! Instead  of  letting  ^he  dead  past  bury 
its  dea^d,  Matthew  Arnold  and  Swinburne  put 
forth ,  alleged  dramas  composed  in  painful  imi- 
tation of  the  Greek  plays,  which  had  been  origi- 
nally planned  in  complete  accord  with  all  the 
circumstances  of  the  actual  theater  of  Dionysus. 
In  like  manner  Tennyson  and  Browning  spent 
their  time  in  copying  the  formlessness  of  Shak- 
spere's  chronicle-plays,  which  were  exactly  suited 
to  the  conditions  of  the  Elizabethan  stage. 
/  This  writing  of  plays  which  were  not  intended  ^ 
to  be  played,  and  which  had  no  relation  to  the 
expectations  of  contemporary  spectator^,  was  an 
aberration  for  which  there  is  no  warrant  in  the 
works  of  any  truly  dramatic  poet.  It  was  just 
as  absurd  for  Tennyson  to  take  as  his  model  the 
semi-medieval  form  of  Shakspere,  regardless  of 
all  the  changes  in  the  circumstances  of  actual 
3^5 


THE   DRAMA   IN   THE    NINETEENTH    CENTURY 

performance  in  the  theater,  as  it  would  have 
been  for  Shakspere  himself  to  have  slavishly  fol- 
lowed the  traditions  of  the  Attic  stage.  It  was 
still  more  absurd  for  Arnold  to  suppose  that  he 
could  really  get  a  Greek  spirit  into  a  play  written 
by  a  British  poet  in  the  nineteenth  century.  Even 
if  it  had  been  possible  for  a  man  thus  to  step  off 
his  own  shadow,  there  was  nothing  to  be  gained 
by  venturing  on  a  vain  rivalry  with  the  noble 
Greek  dramas  which  have  happily  survived  for 
our  delight. 

These  unactable  dramatic  poems,  with  no  bold 
collision  of  will  to  serve  as  a  backbone,  with 
scarcely  any  of  the  necessary  scenes,  without  the 
actuality  of  the  real  play,  intended  to  be  performed 
by  actors  in  a  theater  and  before  an  audience, — 
these  mistakes  of  judgment  may  have  their  im- 
portance in  a  history  of  English  literature ;  but  they 
need  not  even  be  mentioned  in  a  history  of  Eng- 
lish drama,  any  more  than  'Samson  Agonistes' 
will  need  to  be  mentioned  there.  Probably  even 
those  who  most  admire  the  poetry  which  has 
put  on  the  garb  of  the  drama  without  having  pos- 
sessed itself  of  the  spirit  are  not  sorry  that  Milton 
finally  chose  the  epic  form  for  *  Paradise  Lost ' 
rather  than  the  dramatic.  There  is  a  taint  of  un- 
reality about  all  these  misguided  efforts,  whatever 
the  genius  of  the  authors  themselves;  there  is  a 
lack  of  vitality,  due  wholly  to  the  fact  that  these 
316 


THE   DRAMA    IN   THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

English  poets  scorned  the  actual  theater.  They 
yearned  to  reap  the  reward  of  the  dramatic  poet 
without  taking  the  trouble  to  learn  the  trade  of 
the  playwright  and  without  being  willing  to  sub- 
mit to  the  conditions  he  must  perforce  labor 
under. 

Here  Browning,  for  one,  could  have  profited 
by  the  example  of  Hugo,  who  had  perhaps  no 
larger  share  of  the  native  dramatic  gift,  but  who 
put  his  mind  to  a  mastery  of  the  principles  of  the 
dramaturgic  art,  taking  a  model  in  the  playhouse 
itself.  The  French  had  the  double  advantage 
over  the  English  that  their  men-of-letters  kept  in 
contact  with  the  actual  theater,  and  also  that  the 
acknowledged  masterpieces  of  their  drama  had 
been  delayed  until  their  stage  had  become  almost 
modern  in  its  lighting  and  in  its  use  of  scenery. 
Moliere  and  Racine  supply  excellent  examples 
from  whose  form  there  is  no  need  to  vary.  Shak- 
spere  unfortunately  planned  his  great  plays  for  a 
stage  still  more  or  less  medieval;  and  his  mas- 
terpieces have  to  be  modified  and  rearranged 
before  they  conform  to  the  conditions  of  the 
modern  theater.  It  was  easy  enough  to  borrow 
from  him  the  loose  framework  of  the  chronicle- 
play;  but  it  was  impossible  to  steal  the  fire  and 
force  of  his  swifter  and  more  compact  tragedies. 
It  is  to  be  remarked  also  that  we  who  speak 
English  have  rarely  revealed  the  instinctive  feeling 

3>7 


THE  DRAMA   IN   THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

for  form  which  the  French  seem  to  have  acquired 
through  the  Latin  from  the  Greek.  Quite  signifi- 
cant of  the  French  inherent  regard  for  structural 
beauty  is  the  fact  that  the  gracefully  lyric  roman- 
tic-comedies of  Alfred  de  Musset,  published  as 
closet-dramas,  needed  only  slight  readjustment  to 
fitJ:hem  for  performance. 

In  the  middle  years  of  the  century  there  was  a 
living  dramatic  literature  only  in  France.  The 
romanticist  drama  had  withered  away,  altho  its 
spirit  reappeared  now  and  again,  —  for  ex- 
ample we  cannot  help  discovering  in  the  heroine 
of  '  Dame  aux  Camelias '  of  the  younger  Dumas 
a  descendant  of  the  heroine  of  the  '  Antony '  of 
the  elder  Dumas.  But  there  is  little  flavor  of 
romanticism  in  the  best  of  the  later  dramatist's 
profounder  studies  of  contemporary  manners, — 
especially  in  his  masterpiece,  the  'Demi-monde,' 
which  shares  the  foremost  place  in  modern 
French  comedy  with  the  'Gendre  de  M.  Poirier' 
of  Augier  and  Sandeau.  The  *  Froufrou '  of 
Meilhac  and  Halevy  was  their  sole  triumph  in  the 
comedy  which  softens  into  pathos,  while  their 
lighter  plays  contained  a  fascinating  collection  of 
comic  characters,  as  veracious  as  they  were  hu- 
morous. The  comedy-farces  of  Labiche  had  not 
a  little  of  the  large  laughter  of  Moliere's  less  phil- 
osophic plays.  The  comedy-dramas  of  Sardou 
were  the  result  of  an  attempt  to  combine  the 
318 


THE   DRAMA   IN  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

contemporary  satire  of  Beaumarchais  with  the 
self-sufficient  stagecraft  of  Scribe. 


But  even  in  France  the  rivalry  of  the  novel 
made  itself  felt  and  its  sv^elling  vogue  tempted 
some  writers  of  fiction  to  take  an  arrogant  atti- 
tude and  to  assert  that  the  drama  had  had  its 
day.  Perhaps  a  portion  of  their  distaste  for  the 
acted  play  was  owing  to  a  healthy  dislike  for  the 
lingering  artificialities  of  plot-making,  visible  even 
in  so  independent  and  individual  a  playwright  as 
Augier  and  obviously  inherited  from  Scribe.  Yet 
there  was  a  still  more  active  cause  for  their  hos- 
tility, due  to  their  recognizing  that  the  dramatic 
art  must  always  be  more  or  less  democratic  and 
that  the  dramatist  cannot  hold  himself  aloof  from 
the  plain  people.  This  necessity  of  pleasing  the 
public  and  reckoning  with  its  likes  and  dislikes 
was  painful  to  writers  who  chose  to  think  them- 
selves aristocratic, —  Theophile  Gautier,  for  ex- 
ample, and  the  Goncourts. 

One  of  the  Goncourts  was  rash  in  risking  the 
opinion  that  the  drama  was  no  longer  literature 
and  that  in  the  existing  conditions  of  the  theater 
nothing  more  could  be  hoped  from  it.  Gautier 
had  earlier  complained  that  the  stage  never 
touched  subjects  until  they  had  been  worn  thread- 
319 


THE   DRAMA   IN   THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

bare,  not  only  in  the  newspapers  but  in  the  novel. 
Here  the  poetic  art-critic  was  making  a  reproach 
of  that  which  is  really  an  inexorable  condition  of 
the  drama,  so  recognized  ever  since  Aristotle, — 
that  the  playwright  must  broaden  his  appeal,  that 
he  cannot  write  only  for  the  highly  cultivated, 
that  he  must  deal  with  the  universal.  The  dra- 
matist may  be  a  little  in  advance  of  the  mass  of 
men,  but  it  is  not  his  duty  to  be  a  pioneer,  since 
he  can  discuss  the  newest  themes  only  at  the 
risk  of  not  interesting  enough  playgoers  to  fill 
the  theater.  If  Goncourt  had  known  literary  his- 
tory better,  he  might  have  remembered  that  the 
limitations  of  the  theater  had  not  prevented 
Sophocles  and  Shakspere  and  Moliere  from  deal- 
ing with  the  deeper  problems  of  life.  If  he  had 
happened  to  care  about  what  was  going  on  out- 
side of  France  he  could  have  learned  that  even 
while  he  was  recording  his  opinion,  Ibsen  was 
proving  anew  that  there  was  no  reason  why  a 
playwright  should  not  do  his  own  thinking. 

The  drama  was  not  on  its  death-bed,  as  these 
aristocratic  dilettants  were  hastily  declaring;  in- 
deed, it  was  about  to  revive  with  new-born  vigor, 
altho  it  was  not  to  find  the  elixir  of  life  in  France. 
Since  the  Franco-German  war  there  had  been 
visible  among  the  defeated  a  relaxing  energy,  a 
lassitude  which  French  psychologists  have  re- 
gretted as  both  physical  and  moral.  Whenever 
320 


THE    DRAMA    IN   THE    NINETEENTH    CENTURY 

the  national  fiber  is  enfeebled  the  drama  is  likely 
to  be  weakened;  and  this  is  what  took  place  in 
France  in  the  final  years  of  the  century.  When- 
ever a  people  displays  sturdy  resolution  it  is  ripe 
for  a  growth  of  the  drama;  and  this  is  what  was 
to  be  seen  in  Germany  in  the  two  final  decads^ 
when  the  French  were  losing  their  grip.  When- 
ever a  race,  however  few  in  number,  stiffens  its 
will  to  attain  its  common  desires,  the  conditions 
are  favorable  for  the  appearance  of  the  dramatist; 
and  this  is  what  had  happened  in  Norway,  where 
Ibsen  was  coming  to  a  knowledge  of  his  powers. 
/With  the  appearance  of  Ibsen  the  supremacy  of 
France  was  challenged  successfully  for  the  first 
time  in  the  century.  Ibsen's  plays  might  be  de- 
nounced and  derided;  but  it  was  difficult  to  deny 
his  strange  power  or  his  fecundating  influence  on 
the  drama  of  every  modern  language.  ) 

Simultaneously  with  the  natural  reaction  against 
the  excessive  vogue  of  prose-fiction  and  with  the 
revived  interest  in  the  theater  aroused  by  the 
occasional  performances  of  Ibsen's  stimulating 
plays,  there  was  everywhere  a  revision  of  the 
local  laws  which  had  permitted  the  free  stealing 
of  French  plays.  Wn  enlightened  selfishness,  an 
increasing  recognition  of  the  right  of  the  laborer 
to  his  hire,  and  a  growing  sentiment  of  inter- 
national solidarity  led  to  such  an  extension  of 
copyright  and  of  stageright  as  to  assure  the  dra- 
321 


THE   DRAMA   IN   THE   NINETEENTH    CENTURY 

matist  the  control  of  his  own  work  not  only  in 
his  own  language  but  in  almost  every  other. 
The  playwrights  of  the  rest  of  the  world  were 
relieved  from  the  necessity  of  vending  their  wares 
in  a  market  unsettled  by  an  abundant  offering  of 
stolen  goods ;  and  they  also  received  proper  pay- 
ment when  their  own  works  were  translated  into 
other  languages  to  satisfy  the  increasingly  cosmo- 
politan curiosity  of  playgoers  throughout  the 
world. 

The  new  international  laws  even  allowed  the 
dramatist  to  reap  a  double  reward  by  protecting 
his  ownership  of  his  play  as  a  book  also;  and 
thus  they  encouraged  him  to  seek  the  approba- 
tion of  readers  as  well  as  of  spectators.  As  a 
result  of  this  wise  legislation  the  pecuniary  returns 
of  the  drama  were  raised  again  to  an  equality 
with  those  of  prose-fiction,  so  that  the  writer 
who  happened  to  be  born  with  the  dramatic  gift 
was  no  longer  tempted  to  turn  novelist  in  despair 
of  support  by  the  theater. 

The  change  in  the  law  also  brought  with  it 
another  advantage,  since  the  dramatist,  having 
complete  control  of  his  own  writings  abroad  as 
well  as  at  home,  soon  insisted  that  they  should 
be  translated  literally  and  not  betrayed  by  a  fan- 
tastic attempt  at  adaptation;  and  this  tended  to 
terminate  the  reign  of  unreality  in  the  theater.  So 
long  as  French  plots  were  wrenched  out  of  all 
322 


THE   DRAMA   IN   THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

veracity  in  the  absurd  effort  to  localize  them  in  all 
the  four  quarters  of  the  globe,  even  careless  play- 
goers beholding  these  miserable  perversions  must 
have  been  struck  by  their  "incurable  falsity,"  as 
Matthew  Arnold  called  it, — a  falsity  which  tended 
to  prevent  people  from  taking  the  drama  seriously 
or  even  from  expecting  it  to  deal  truthfully  with 
life.  No  artist  is  likely  to  give  his  best  to  a  pub- 
lic which  is  in  the  habit  of  considering  his  art  as 
insincere  and  as  having  no  relation  to  the  eternal 
verities,  ethic  as  well  as  esthetic. 

In  the  final  decad  of  the  century  there  was  abun- 
dant evidence  that  the  drama  was  rising  rapidly 
in  the  esteem  of  thoughtful  men  and  women.' 
This  higher  repute  was  due  in  part,  of  course,  to 
the  respectful  attention  which  was  compelled  by 
the  weight  and  might  of  Ibsen's  plays.  It  was 
due  also  to  the  efforts  of  younger  dramatists  in 
the  various  languages  to  grapple  resolutely  with 
the  problems  of  life  and  to  deal  honestly  with  the 
facts  of  existence.  Verga  and  Sudermann,  Pinero 
and  Echegaray,  are  names  to  be  neglected  by  no 
one  who  wishes  to  understand  the  trend  of  mod- 
ern thought.  At  the  end  of  the  century  the  drama 
might  still  be  inferior  to  prose-fiction  in  English 
and  in  Spanish ;  but  it  was  probably  superior  in 
German  and  in  Italian.  The  theater  was  even 
beginning  again  to  attract  the  poets;  and  Haupt- 
mann  and  Rostand,  D'Annunzio  and  Phillips, 
323 


THE   DRAMA    IN    THE   NINETEENTH    CENTURY 

having  mastered  the  methods  of  the  modern 
stage,  and  having  ascertained  its  limitations  and 
its  possibilities,  proved  that  there  need  be  no 
more  talk  of  a  divorce  between  poetry  and  the 
drama. 

When  the  last  year  of  the  century  drew  to  an 
end,  the  outlook  for  the  drama  was  strangely  un- 
like that  of  a  quarter-century  earlier.  Except  in 
France,  there  was  everywhere  evidence  of  reinvigo- 
ration ;  and  even  in  France  there  were  not  lacking 
playwrights  of  promise,  like  Hervieu.  Perhaps 
everywhere,  except  in  Norway,  it  was  promise 
rather  than  final  performance  which  characterized 
the  drama ;  and  yet  the  actual  performance  of  not 
a  few  of  the  dramatists  of  the  half-dozen  modern 
languages  was  already  worthy  of  the  most  seri- 
ous criticism.  Just  as  a  clever  playwright  so 
constructs  the  sequence  of  his  scenes  in  the  first 
act  that  the  interest  of  expectancy  is  excited, 
so  the  nineteenth  century  —  in  so  far  as  drama  is 
concerned  —  dropped  its  curtain,  leaving  an  inter- 
rogation-mark hanging  in  the  air  behind  it. 


324 


X.     THE   FUTURE  OF  THE   DRAMA 


WHEN  we  stand  upon  the  portal  of  a  new 
century  a  glance  back  may  serve  to  reas- 
sure us  for  a  gaze  forward ;  altho  we  must  ac- 
knowledge that  in  the  nineteenth  century,  as  in- 
deed in  the  eighteenth  also,  the  drama  did  not  pass 
through  a  splendid  period  of  expansion  such  as 
made  glorious  its  history  in  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury. We  are  forced  to  remark  that  in  the  course 
of  the  last  two  hundred  years  the  drama  had 
lost  its  literary  supremacy,  partly  as  a  result  of 
its  own  enfeeblement,  and  partly  in  consequence 
of  the  overwhelming  competition  of  prose-fic- 
tion, which  was  able  to  perform  in  the  nine- 
teenth century  even  more  than  it  had  promised 
in  the  eighteenth. 

But  we  are  encouraged  to  note  that  a  score  of 
years  before  the  century  drew  to  an  end  the  novel 
was  beginningto  show  signs  of  slackening  energy, 
while  the  play  was  apparently  again  gathering 
strength  for  a  sharper  rivalry.  In  German  and  in 
325 


THE   FUTURE   OF  THE   DRAMA 

English,  in  Italian  and  in  Spanish,  young  writers 
of  ardent  ambition  were  mastering  the  methods 
of  the  theater  and  were  recognizing  in  the  drama 
the  form  in  which  they  could  best  express  them- 
selves and  in  which  they  could  body  forth  most 
satisfactorily  their  own  vision  of  life,  with  its 
trials,  its  ironies,  and  its  problems.  Even  in 
French,  in  which  language  the  drama  had  flour- 
ished most  abundantly  during  the  middle  of  the 
century  only  to  languish  a  little  toward  the  end, 
the  finai  years  were  to  be  illumined  by  the  tri- 
umphs of  a  young  poet,  possessed  of  a  delightful 
fantasy  and  initiated  into  every  secret  of  stage- 
craft. And  afar  in  the  Scandinavian  land, 
which  seems  so  remote  to  most  of  us,  there  still 
towered  the  stern  figure  of  the  powerful  play- 
wright whose  stimulating  influence  had  been 
felt  in  the  dramatic  literature  of  every  modern 
language. 

Thus  we  catch  a  glimpse  of  one  of  the  most 
striking  characteristics  of  the  modern  theater, —  its 
extraordinary  cosmopolitanism  which  made  pos- 
sible the  performance  of  *  Cyrano  de  Bergerac ' 
and  of  the  'Doll's  Home'  in  every  quarter  of  the 
globe.  Not  only  can  we  find  French  and  Ger- 
man plays  acted  frequently  in  New  York,  but  we 
are  glad  to  record  that  the  English-speaking  stage 
was  again  exporting  its  products,  and  that  Mr. 
Bronson  Howard's  '  Saratoga '  was  performed  in 
326 


THE   FUTURE   OF  THE   DRAMA 

Berlin,  Mr.  Gillette's  *  Secret  Service '  in  Paris,  and 
Mr.  Pinero's  *  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray '  in  Rome. 
Even  more  noteworthy  is  the  fact  that  the  play- 
goers of  New  York  had  been  permitted  to  see  an 
English  play,  'Hamlet,'  acted  by  a  French  com- 
pany, a  German  play,  *  Magda,'  acted  by  an  Ital- 
ian company,  and  a  Russian  play,  the  '  Power  of 
Darkness,'  acted  by  a  German  company. 

An  educated  man  to-day  is  more  than  a  native 
of  his  own  country :  he  is  also  a  citizen  of  the 
world,  just  as  the  educated  man  was  in  the  mid- 
dle ages  when  all  Europe  was  governed  by  the 
Church  of  Rome  and  by  the  Holy  Roman  Empire, 
and  when  all  men  of  learning  wrote  in  Latin  and 
studied  the  same  Roman  law.  The  spread  of 
instruction,  the  ability  to  understand  other  lan- 
guages than  the  native  tongue,  and  the  intelligent 
curiosity  of  the  more  cultivated  public,  have 
brought  about  a  unity  in  modern  literature  like 
that  which  was  visible  in  medieval  literature  before 
the  Renascence  came  and  before  the  population 
of  Europe  was  segregated  into  separate  peoples, 
hostile  and  intolerant.  We  have  not  let  go  the 
idea  of  nationality,  and  indeed  we  cherish  it  un- 
ceasingly ;  but  we  are  not  now  afraid  to  see  the 
idea  of  cosmopolitanism  grafted  on  it. 

In  the  middle  ages  the  drama  was  almost  the 
same  everywhere;  and  a  French  mystery  was 
always  very  like  an  English  mystery,  just  as  an 
327 


THE   FUTURE   OF   THE   DRAMA 

Italian  sacred-representation  was  very  similar  to 
a  Spanish  sacramental-act.  So  at  the  beginning 
of  the  twentieth  century  the  forms  of  the  drama 
are  almost  identical  throughout  the  civilized 
world.  In  structure  there  is  little  difference  now- 
adays between  an  English  play  and  a  Spanish, — 
far  less  than  there  was  when  John  Webster  and 
Lope  de  Vega  were  almost  simultaneously  put- 
ting upon  the  stage  the  pitiful  story  of  the  sad 
Duchess  of  Malfi.  There  is  a  flavor  of  the  soil 
about  the  'Doll's  Home,'  about  'Magda,'  and 
about  the  *  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray  ' ;  the  first  is 
unmistakably  Scandinavian,  the  second  is  indu- 
bitably Teutonic,  and  the  third  is  frankly  British ; 
but  in  form  there  is  little  to  distinguish  them 
from  one  another, — just  as  there  is  nothing  in 
the  structure  of  any  one  of  them  to  differentiate  it 
from  the  *  Gendre  de  M.  Poirier,'  or  from  the 
'  Froufrou, '  written  in  French  during  the  same 
half-century. 


The  cosmopolitanism  of  our  civilization  at  the 
beginning  of  the  twentieth  century,  the  eager- 
ness of  artists  of  every  nationality  to  profit  by 
what  they  can  learn  from  their  fellow-craftsmen 
in  other  capitals,  the  wide-spread  international 
borrowing, —  these  are  not  the  sole  causes  of  the 
similarity  of  structure  observable  in  the  pieces  of 
328 


THE   FUTURE   OF  THE   DRAMA 

the  chief  living  playwrights  of  to-day.  There  is 
another  reason  to  be  detected  by  extending  our 
glance  into  the  past  history  of  the  drama  and 
piercing  beyond  the  middle  ages  into  antiquity. 
If  we  do  this  we  cannot  fail  to  see  that  this  like- 
ness of  the  English  play  and  the  German  play  to 
the  French  play  is  due  in  part  to  ^he  fact  that  in 
all  the  modern  languages  the  drama  has  reached 
an  advanced  period  of  its  evolution,  when  it  has 
definitely  specialized  itself  and  when  it  has  been 
able  to  disentangle  itself  from  the  other  and  non- 
dramatic  element^  with  which  it  was  perforce 
commingled  in  the  more  primitive  periods. 

The  history  of  the  drama  is  the  long  record  of 
the  effort  of  the  dramatist  to  get  hold  of  the  es- 
sentially dramatic  and  to  cast  out  everything 
else.  The  essence  of  the  drama  is  a  representation 
of_aJiuman  will  exerting  itself  against  an  oppos- 
ing force;  and  the  playwright  has  ever  been 
seeking  the  means  of  presenting  his  conflict  with- 
out admixture  of  anything  else.  The  tragedy  of 
the  Greeks,  elaborated  out  of  rustic  song  and 
dance,  retained  to  the  end  the  evidences  of  its 
origin,  not  only  in  the  lyrics  of  the  chorus  but  in 
their  vocal  music  and  in  their  sculpturesque  atti- 
tudes. The  drama  of  the  Elizabethans,  descended 
directly  from  the  mysteries  and  moralities  of  the 
middle  ages,  was  often  prosily  didactic,  one  cha- 
racter being  permitted  to  discourse  at  undue 
329 


THE   FUTURE  OF  THE   DRAMA 

length,  in  much  the  same  fashion  as  the  medieval 
expositor,  and  another  being  allowed  to  deliver  a 
bravura  passage,  lyric  or  rhetorical,  not  unlike  the 
tenor  solo  of  Italian  opera,  frequently  delightful 
in  itself  but  alv^ays  undramatic. 

The  stage  of  the  Elizabethan  theater  was 
sometimes  in  the  course  of  a  single  play  made  to 
serve  as  a  pulpit  for  a  sermon,  a  platform  for  a 
lecture,  and  a  singing-gallery  for  a  ballad ;  and  it 
would  be  easy  enough  to  single  out  scores  of 
passages,  even  in  Shakspere,  which  exist  for  their 
own  sake  and  which  are  not  integral  to  the  play 
wherein  they  are  embedded.  But  Shakspere  could, 
when  he  chose,  anticipate  the  more  modern 
swiftness  and  singleness  of  purpose;  and  some- 
times when  he  was  inspired  by  his  theme,  as  in 
'Macbeth'  and  'Othello,' he  put  all  his  strength 
in  the  depicting  of  the  central  struggle  which  was 
at  the  heart  of  his  play.  He  excluded  all  acci- 
dental and  adventitious  superfluities,  of  which  the 
most  of  his  fellow-playwrights  never  thought  of 
depriving  themselves.  There  is  also  to  be  re- 
marked in  the  Elizabethan  plays  generally  a  nar- 
rative freedom  which  is  epic  rather  than  drama- 
tic. So  in  the  plays  written  under  Louis  XIV 
there  is  to  be  observed,  more  especially  in  Cor- 
neille's  tragedies,  an  oratorical  tendency,  a  prone- 
ness  to  formal  argument,  which  is  equally  aside 
from  the  truly  dramatic. 
350 


THE   FUTURE  OF  THE   DRAMA 

But  this  confusion  is  not  peculiar  to  the  drama 
and  it  is  to  be  studied  in  all  the  other  arts  also. 
As  M.  Emile  Faguet  has  put  it  clearly,  "litera- 
tures always  begin  with  works  in  which  the 
various  species  are  either  fused  or  confused,  de- 
pending on  the  genius  of  the  authors;  they  al- 
ways continue  with  works  in  which  the  distinc- 
tion of  species  is  observed;  and  they  always  end 
with  works  which  embrace  only  the  half  or  the 
quarter  or  the  tenth  of  a  single  species."  In  other 
words,  there  is  always  increasing  differentiation ; 
there  is  an  advance  from  the  heterogeneous  to 
the  homogeneous;  and  M.  Faguet  gives  as  a 
typical  example  the  simplification  of  Greek 
comedy.  He  asserts  that  the  lyrical-burlesque 
of  Aristophanes  was  more  or  less  a  medley  of 
every  possible  species, —  "true-comedy,  farce, 
pantomime,  op^ra-bouffe,  ballet,  fairy-spectacle, 
political  satire,  literary  satire";  and  yet  in  the 
course  of  less  than  a  century,  little  by  little,  what- 
ever did  not  belong  strictly  to  pure  comedy  was 
eliminated.  The  chorus  was  cast  aside,  taking 
with  it  the  opera,  the  ballet,  the  fairy-spectacle : 
and  with  the  departure  of  the  parabasis  personal 
satire  went  also,  taking  eloquence  with  it.  So 
the  lyrical-burlesque  of  Aristophanes  was  slowly 
simplified  into  the  comic  drama  of  Menander, 
which  is  but  "the  witty  and  delicate-  depicting 
of  average  manners."  Latin  comedy  followed 
33^ 


THE   FUTURE   OF   THE   DRAMA 

Greek  comedy  slavishly;  but  French  comedy, 
altho  it  inherited  the  classic  traditions,  still  fur- 
ther differentiated  itself  into  subspecies,  Moliere, 
for  example,  showing  how  pure  comedy  could 
sustain  itself  without  the  aid  of  farce. 

The  simplification  of  the  primitive  play,  which 
was  carelessly  comprehensive  in  its  scope,  has 
been  the  result  of  a  steadily  increasing  artistic 
sense.  It  is  due  chiefly  to  the  growth  of  a  criti- 
cal temper  which  is  no  longer  content  to  enjoy 
unthinkingly  and  which  is  educating  itself  to  find 
pleasure  in  the  purity  of  type.  This  more  deli- 
cate appreciation  of  esthetic  propriety  is  likely  to 
be  gratified  only  in  the  higher  efforts  of  the  dra- 
matist, in  those  plays  which  plainly  aspire  to  be 
judged  also  as  literature.  We  need  not  look  for 
anything  of  the  sort  in  the  more  boisterous  popu- 
lar pieces  which  make  no  pretense  to  literary 
merit.  In  sensational  melodrama,  for  example, 
we  are  none  of  us  shocked  by  the  commingling 
of  farce  and  tragedy;  and  in  operetta  we  are  not 
even  surprised  by  the  admixture  of  lyric  senti- 
mentality and  horse-play  fun-making.  But  the 
more  literary  a  play  may  be,  the  more  elevated 
its  quality,  the  more  carefully  we  expect  it  to 
avoid  incongruity  and  to  conform  to  the  type  of 
its  species. 

It  seems  now  as  tho  the  unliterary  plays,  like 
melodramas  and  operettas,  would  always  owe 
some  portion  of  their  popularity  to  sheer  specta- 
332 


THE   FUTURE   OF   THE   DRAMA 

cle,  to  extraneous  allurements  devised  to  tickle  the 
ears  or  to  glut  the  eyes  of  the  unthinking  popu- 
lace. But  it  is  evident  also  that  the  critical  spirit 
of  the  more  cultivated  playgoers  is  now  inclined 
to  resent  the  inclusion  in  the  literary  drama  of 
anything  foreign  to  the  main  theme,  whether  this 
extraneous  matter  is  didactic  or  lyric,  rhetorical 
or  oratorical.  They  prefer  that  the  stage  should 
not  be  a  platform  or  a  pulpit.  In  Athens  under 
Pericles,  and  in  London  under  Elizabeth,  the  poets 
who  wrote  plays  were  addressing  audiences 
which  had  not  read  the  newspapers  and  which 
might  welcome  instruction  nowadays  needless. 
The  impatient  playgoers  of  our  own  time  can  see 
no  reason  why  they  also  should  not  profit  by  the 
invention  of  printing;  and  they  are  quick  to  re- 
sent any  digression  from  the  straight  path  of  the 
plot.  They  are  frankly  annoyed  when  the  author 
ventures  to  halt  the  action  that  he  may  deliver  a 
sermon,  an  oration,  or  a  lecture,  that  he  may  de- 
claim a  descriptive  report  or  an  editorial  article. 
They  have  not  come  to  the  theater  to  be  in- 
structed, but  to  be  delighted  by  the  specific  plea- 
sure that  only  the  theater  can  give. 


Ill 

This  elimination  from  our  latter-day  stage-plays 
of  all  the  non-dramatic  elements  which  are  so 
abundant  in  the  earlier  periods  of  the  drama  has 

333 


THE    FUTURE    OF   THE   DRAMA 

been  accompanied,  and  indeed  greatly  aided,  by 
certain  striking  changes  in  the  physical  conditions 
of  performance,  and,  more  especially,  in  the  shape 
and  size  and  circumstances  of  the  theater  itself. 
The  modern  playhouse  is  as  unlike  as  possible, 
not  only  to  the  spacious  Theater  of  Dionysus  in 
Athens,  with  its  many  thousand  spectators  seated 
along  the  curving  hillside,  but  also  to  the  Globe 
Theater  and  its  contemporary  rivals  in  London 
and  in  Madrid,  which  were  only  unroofed  court- 
yards. 

The  plays  of  Sophocles  were  performed  out- 
doors, where  the  wind  from  the  Aegean  Sea 
might  flutter  the  robes  of  the  actors;  and  the 
plays  of  Shakspere  and  of  Calderon  were  per- 
formed in  buildings  open  to  the  sky,  so  that  a 
sudden  rain-storm  might  interfere  sadly  with  the 
telling  of  the  tale.  The  English  and  the  Spanish 
playwrights  were  like  the  Greek  in  that  they  all 
had  to  depend  on  the  daylight.  The  pieces  of 
Moliere  were  performed  by  candle-light  in  a 
weather-tight  hall  and  on  a  stage  decked  with 
the  actual  scenery,  which  had  been  lacking  in 
London  and  Madrid  as  well  as  in  Athens;  and 
this  is  one  reason  why  Moliere  was  able  to  per- 
fect the  outward  form  of  the  modern  play.  The 
comedies  of  Sheridan  and  of  Beaumarchais  were 
produced  originally  in  theaters  externally  similar 
to  ours  of  to-day,  but  huge  in  size,  villainously 
354 


THE    FUTURE   OF  THE  DRAMA 

ill-lighted  with  oil-lamps,  and  having  a  stage  the 
curve  of  which  projected  far  beyond  the  prosce- 
nium-arch. It  was  on  this  space,  beyond  the  cur- 
tain and  close  to  the  feeble  footlights,  that  all 
the  vital  episodes  of  the  play  had  to  be  acted, 
because  it  was  only  there  that  the  expression  of 
the  actor's  visage  could  be  made  visible  to  the 
spectators. 

The  most  marked  differences  between  our 
more  modern  playhouses  at  the  beginning  of  the 
twentieth  century  and  their  predecessors  a  hun- 
dred years  ago  are  due  to  the  improvement  in  the 
methods  of  lighting,  gas  giving  a  far  better  light 
than  oil,  and  the  later  electricity  having  many  ad- 
vantages over  gas.  As  a  result  of  the  newer 
means  of  illumination  the  actor  can  now  stand  on 
whatever  part  of  the  stage  it  is  best  for  him  to 
place  himself,  and  he  is  no  longer  forced  to  come 
down  to  the  center  of  the  footlights  so  that  his 
features  may  be  in  the  full  glare  of  the  "focus" 
(as  it  used  to  be  termed).  The  footlights  them- 
selves are  of  less  importance,  since  there  are  now 
"border-lights"  and  "bunch-lights,"  and  since 
the  whole  stage  can  be  flooded  with  a  sudden 
glare  or  instantly  plunged  in  darkness  at  the  turn 
of  a  handle  or  two.  The  space  that  used  to 
curve  out  into  the  auditorium  has  been  cut  back 
to  the  curtain;  and  the  proscenium  opening  has 
now  assumed  the  form  of  a  picture-frame,  with- 
335 


THE  FUTURE   OF   THE   DRAMA 

in  which  the  curtain  rises  and  falls  and  before 
which  no  actor  has  any  occasion  to  advance. 

This  change  is  far  more  momentous  than  it 
may  seem  at  first  sight  —  indeed,  it  is  probable 
that  its  influence  will  be  far-reaching.  Only  in 
the  score  or  two  years  since  the  proscenium  has 
become  a  picture-frame  have  all  the  audience 
been  seated  in  front  of  the  performers.  Until 
then  the  acting  had  always  taken  place  in  a  space 
more  or  less  surrounded  by  the  spectators  and  in 
closest  proximity  to  them.  In  Greece  the  chorus 
and  the  three  actors  played  their  parts  in  the 
orchestra,  around  which  the  citizens  sat  in  tiers 
that  rose  high  on  the  sides  of  the  hill.  In  Eng- 
land in  the  middle  ages  the  performers  may  have 
presented  the  major  portion  of  their  mystery  on 
the  separate  pageants,  but  not  a  little  of  the  ac- 
tion was  represented  in  the  neutral  ground  around 
and  between  the  pageants,  and  therefore  in  the 
midst  of  the  assembled  sight-seers;  and  in  Eng- 
land, again,  under  Elizabeth,  the  stage  was  but  a 
bare  platform  thrust  out  into  the  yard,  with  some 
of  the  spectators  sitting  along  the  edges  of  it  and 
with  the  most  of  them  standing  on  three  sides. 
In  France  after  the  *Cid'  of  Corneille  and  until 
after  the  '  Semiramis  '  of  Voltaire  a  portion  of  the 
audience  was  also  accommodated  with  seats  on 
the  stage.  And  in  the  eighteenth  century,  as  we 
have  seen,  the  stage  curved  forward  into  the 
3}6 


THE   FUTURE   OF   THE   DRAMA 

auditorium  far  beyond  the  stage-boxes,  the  spec- 
tators in  these  being  able  to  see  the  actors  only 
in  profile. 

But  in  the  eighteenth  century  the  stage  had 
been  so  far  withdrawn  that  the  use  of  the  curtain 
became  general  to  mark  the  division  into  acts. 
The  absence  of  a  curtain  had  forced  Sophocles  and 
Shakspere  to  end  their  pieces  by  withdrawing  all 
the  characters  from  the  view  of  the  spectators; 
and  even  Moliere  and  Voltaire,  perhaps  in  defer- 
ence to  the  presence  of  those  who  sat  on  the 
stage,  always  marked  the  end  of  an  act  by  a 
general  exit  of  the  performers.  Not  until  the 
nineteenth  century  was  well  advanced  did  the 
dramatic  poets  begin  to  avail  themselves  of  the 
advantages  of  ''discovering"  one  or  more  cha- 
racters in  sight  as  the  curtain  rose,  and  of  drop- 
ping it  at  the  end  of  the  act  upon  several  cha- 
racters grouped  picturesquely. 

The  modern  playhouse  differs  from  its  prede- 
cessors of  past  ages  in  the  power  to  illuminate 
every  part  of  the  stage.  Sometimes  we  are 
inclined  to  suppose  that  gorgeous  spectacle, 
elaborate  scenery,  and  ingenuity  of  mechanical 
effects  are  characteristics  of  our  latter-day  thea- 
ters only;  but  when  we  consider  the  records  we 
soon  find  that  this  is  not  the  fact.  The  late  M. 
Nuitter,  archivist  of  the  Opera  in  Paris  (than 
whom  there  was  no  higher  authority),  once 
337 


THE   FUTURE   OF  THE   DRAMA 

assured  me  that  there  was  no  spectacular  device 
in  which  the  Italians  of  the  Renascence  had  not 
anticipated  the  utmost  endeavor  of  the  moderns. 
Leonardo  and  his  followers  foresaw  all  that  could 
be  done  in  this  direction;  and  they  invented 
many  a  marvel  for  the  royal  processions  and  for 
the  court-ballets  with  which  their  princes  liked 
to  amuse  themselves.  It  was  in  Italy  that  Inigo 
Jones  learned  the  secrets  of  the  wonders  he  was 
wont  to  display  in  the  beautiful  masques  for 
which  Ben  Jonson  found  fit  words. 


/  The  Italian  scene-painters  and  their  apt  pupils 
in  France  and  in  England  could  accomplish  all 
that  is  within  the  reach  of  the  most  liberal  of 
modern  managers, —  excepting  only  the  ability  to 
show  the  result  of  their  labors  properly  illumi- 
nated. The  power  of  directing  at  will  whatever 
light  may  be  desired  confers  an  advantage  upon 
the  modern  stage-manager  denied  to  his  predeces- 
sors; and  it  is  certain  to  impress  its  mark  upon 
the  drama  of  the  next  half-century, — just  as 
every  other  changing  circumstance  of  the  theater 
in  the  past  has  necessarily  registered  itself  in  the 
history  of  the  dramatic  literature  that  followed  it. 
What  will  hereafter  be  shown  on  the  stage  within 
the  picture-frame  is  likely  to  be  increasingly  pic- 
torial and  plastic. 

338 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  DRAMA 

The  dramatist  will  profit  by  his  ability  to  reach 
the  soul  through  the  eye  as  well  as  through  thej 
ear.  He  will  be  tempted  to  let  gesture  supple- 
ment speech,  or  even  on  occasion  to  let  it  serve 
as  a  substitute.  In  real  life  the  action  precedes 
the  word;  and  it  is  sometimes  so  significant  that 
the  explanatory  phrase  which  follows  is  not  al- 
ways needed.  Lessing  had  seized  this  truth, 
which  Diderot  had  half  suggested ;  and  he  urged 
that  the  playwright  should  leave  much  to  the 
player,  since  there  were  many  effects  which  the 
actor  could  produce  better  than  the  poet.  Her- 
bert Spencer  has  remarked  upon  "the  force  with 
which  simple  ideas  are  communicated  by  signs  "; 
and  he  noted  that  it  was  far  more  expressive  to 
point  to  the  door  or  to  place  the  fingers  on  the 
lips  than  to  say  ''Leave  the  room"  or  "Keep 
silent."  The  more  accomplished  the  playwright' 
chances  to  be,  the  more  often  he  will  have  simple 
ideas  to  communicate  forcibly;  and  the  more 
frequently  will  he  speak  to  the  eye  rather  than  to| 
the  ear. 

In  the  ill-lighted  theaters  of  old,  the  dramatic 
poet  had  to  take  care  that  his  plot  was  made 
clear  in  words  as  well  as  in  deeds;  and  he  was 
tempted  often  to  let  his  rhetoric  run  away  with 
him.  But  in  the  well-lighted  modern  houses  he 
can,  if  he  chooses,  let  actions  speak  louder  than 
words.  Being  able  to  reach  the  playgoers  through 
their  visual  as  well  as  their  auditory  sense,  he 
339 


THE   FUTURE   OF   THE   DRAMA 

sometimes  plans  to  let  a  self-betraying  movement 
do  its  work  without  any  needless  verbal  elucida- 
tion. He  recognizes  that  there  are  moments  in 
life  when  a  silence  may  be  more  eloquent  than 
the  silver  sentences  of  any  soliloquy.  He  is  well 
aware  that  a  sudden  pause,  a  piercing  glance,  an 
abrupt  change  of  expression,  may  convey  to  the 
spectator  what  is  passing  in  the  minds  of  the 
characters  more  directly  than  the  most  brilliant 
dialog.  He  has  noted  not  only  that  emotion  is 
often  inarticulate  when  it  is  keenest,  but  also 
that  a  mental  struggle  at  the  very  crisis  of  the 
story  can  often  be  made  intelligible  by  visible 
acts;  and  he  knows  that  the  spectators  are  far 
more  interested  in  what  is  done  on  the  stage 
than  in  what  is  said. 

At  first  sight  it  may  seem  to  some  as  tho  this 
utilization  of  the  picture-frame  must  result  in 
making  the  drama  in  the  immediate  future  even 
less  literary  than  it  is  to-day.  This  will  surely 
appear  to  be  the  case  to  those  who  are  accus- 
tomed to  consider  the  drama  as  tho  it  was  merely 
one  of  the  divisions  of  literature, —  or,  indeed,  as 
tho  it  was  a  department  of  poetry.  But  the 
drama,  altho  it  has  often  a  literary  element  of 
prime  importance,  does  not  lie  wholly  within  the 
boundaries  of  literature;  and  it  has  always  exer- 
cised its  privilege  of  profiting  by  all  the  other 
arts,  pictorial  and  plastic,  epic,  lyrical,  and  musi- 
340 


THE    FUTURE    OF    THE    DRAMA 

cal.     Above  all,  the  drama  is  what  it  is  because 
of  its  specifically  dramatic  qualities;   and  these 
qualities  can  be  exhibited  wholly  without  rhe- 
torical assistance,  as  every  one  will  admit  who 
has   had   the  good  fortune  to   see  the  'Enfant 
Prodigue.'       In    fact,  many   a    noble    drama — \ 
'Hamlet,'   for   one  —  has  a   pantomime  for   its  \ 
skeleton  and  calls  on  literature  only  to  furnish  I 
its  flesh  and  blood. 

The  dramaturgic  art  being  distinct  from  the 
poetic,  it  can  on  occasion  achieve  results  impos- 
sible to  the  lyric  poet  or  the  epic.  Indeed,  its 
ability  to  do  this  is  the  sole  reason  for  its  exis- 
tence. What  need  of  it  would  there  be  if  it  was! 
no  more  than  the  echo  of  another  art  ?  As  Les-I 
sing  asked  with  his  customary  directness :  "  Why 
undergo  the  painful  toil  of  the  dramatic  form  ?| 
Why  build  a  theater,  disguise  men  and  women' 
in  costumes,  task  their  memories,  pack  all  the 
population  in  a  playhouse,  if  my  work,  when 
acted,  can  produce  only  a  few  of  the  effects  which 
could  be  produced  by  a  good  narrative  read  by 
each  at  the  fireside  ?  "  And  the  younger  Dumas 
pointed  out  how  an  effect  made  in  the  theater  is 
sometimes  so  unlike  any  produced  by  a  good 
narrative  read  at  the  fireside  that  a  spectator 
seeking  to  recover,  by  means  of  the  printed  page, 
the  emotion  that  had  stirred  him  as  he  saw  the 
piece  performed,  is  sometimes  "unable  not  only 
341 


THE    FUTURE   OF   THE   DRAMA 

to  find  the  emotion  again  in  the  written  words, 
but  even  to  discover  the  place  where  it  was.  A 
Kvord,  a  look,  a  gesture,  a  silence,  a  purely  atrno- 
ppheric  combination,  had  helcijiim  spellbound." 
But  we  may  go  further  and  insist  that  litera- 
ture has  a  broader  scope  than  is  carelessly  allowed 
it;  and  it  is  not  lightly  limited  to  mere  rhetoric. 
It  is  not  confined  to  phrase-making  only.  Liter- 
ature goes  deeper  than  style  or  even  than  poetry. 
It  includes  invention  and  construction;  it  is  con- 
cerned with  the  meaning  and  with  the  propriety 
of  the  thought  contained.  It  deals  with  philoso- 
phy and  with  psychology  also.  Now,  if  we  take 
this  larger  interpretation  of  literature,  we  need 
not  fear  that  the  drama  is  likely  to  be  less  liter- 
ary because  the  stage  has  receded  behind  a  pic- 
ture-frame. But  it  is  likely  to  be  less  rhetorical, 
less  oratorical,  less  lyric,  less  epic,  more  purely 
dramatic. 


Whether  it  shall  be  less  poetic  also  will  depend 
not  on  any  circumstance  of  the  actual  theater,— 
the  use  of  a  picture-frame,  or  the  power  of  con- 
trolling the  lights  of  the  stage,  —but  on  the  attitude 
of  the  next  generation  toward  the  ideal.  If  the 
growth  of  the  useful  arts,  if  the  advance  of  sci- 
entific discovery,  if  the  spread  of  democracy,  if 
any  or  all  of  these  things  shall  tend  to  destroy 
542 


THE    FUTURE   OF   THE   DRAMA 

our  desire  for  the  higher  life,— if  there  is,  as  Mr. 
Leslie  Stephen  has  asserted,  "  something  in  the 
very  nature  of  modern  progress  essentially  an- 
tagonistic to  poetry  and  romance,"  then  the 
drama  of  the  future  will  be  unpoetic,  as  all  lit- 
erature then  must  needs  be.  The  drama  will  lack 
poetry  just  as  every  other  form  of  art  will  be 
devoid  of  it,  no  more  and  no  less.  If,  however, 
romance  springs  eternal  in  the  human  breast,  if 
poetry  is  ever  young,  if  beauty  is  born  again 
with  every  springtime,  if  Mr.  Stephen  is  wrong 
in  his  prophecy  and  if  Lowell  was  right  in  be- 
lieving that  "  while  there  is  grace  in  grace,  love 
in  love,  beauty  in  beauty,  God  will  still  send 
poets  to  find  them  and  bear  witness  of  them," 
—then  the  drama  will  have  its  full  share  of  poetry 
in  the  future  as  in  the  past. 

But  we  may  venture  the  prediction  that  the  \ 
poetry  hereafter  to  be  found  in  the  drama  will  be  I 
less  extraneous  than  it  has  often  been  hitherto.  1 
There  may  seem  to  be  less  of  it,  but  what  there 
is  will  belong  absolutely  to  the  theme.     It  will  be 
internal  and  integral;  it  will  not  be  external  or 
merely  affixed.     It  will  reside  rather  in  the  con- 
ception of  the  story  and  in  the  relation  of  the 
several  characters  than  in  the  language  they  may 
address  to  one  another.     The  poetic  playwrights 
of  the  future  will  be  more  likely  to  profit  by  the 
example  set  by  Shakspere  in  *  Romeo  and  Juliet/ 
343 


THE   FUTURE   OF   THE   DRAMA 

which  is  as  beautiful  in  idea  as  it  is  in  phrasing, 
than  to  follow  that  given  in  '  Measure  for  Mea- 
sure,' the  subject-matter  of  which  is  abhorrent, 
unworthy,  and  in  itself  unpoetic,  however  splen- 
didly it  has  been  draped  in  verse. 

Such  poetry  as  there  may  be  in  the  dialog  will 
be  there,  not  for  its  own  sake  chiefly,  but  because 
it  helps  to  enlighten  the  situation,  to  illustrate 
character,  or  to  reveal  motive.  The  action  of  the 
play  will  no  longer  pause  for  a  rhetorical  ex- 
cursus like  the  satiric  verses  of  Jaques  about  the 
seven  ages  of  man.  The  set  speech,  the  orator- 
ical display,  the  tirade,  as  the  French  term  it,  will 
tend  to  disappear;  and  such  lyrical  passages  as 
the  poet  may  feel  hereafter  that  he  must  have  he 
will  lead  up  to  so  artfully  that  they  will  seem  to 
be  useful  to  the  story,  just  as  Shakspere  made 
Othello's  description  of  his  wooing,  surcharged 
as  it  is  with  poetry,  appear  to  be  absolutely  ne- 
cessary to  the  proper  presentation  of  the  subject. 

We  can  predict  with  almost  equal  certainty 
that  poetry  will  not  be  wasted  on  unpoetical 
themes,  as  has  happened  only  too  often  in  earlier 
periods  of  the  drama.  The  vivacity  and  the 
brilliancy  of  the  verse  in  certain  of  Massinger's 
dramas,  and  even  in  a  few  of  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher's,  should  not  blind  us  to  the  fact  that  the 
subjects  are  often  sordid,  and  that  some  of  these 
plays  would  have  been  solider  pieces  of  work  if 

344 


THE   FUTURE   OF   THE    DRAMA 

they  had  been  wrought  in  honest  prose.  This 
use  of  verse  by  the  Elizabethan  dramatic  poets, 
even  when  the  subjects  they  had  selected  were 
frankly  prosaic,  was  unfortunately  responsible  for 
much  of  the  unreality  we  can  discover  now  and 
again  in  their  plays.  A  beautiful  theme  •  may 
demand  beautiful  verse;  but  a  tale  of  every-day 
life  can  best  be  told  in  the  language  of  every 
day.  Some  of  the  Elizabethans  seemed  to  find  in 
blank-verse  a  warrant  for  an  arbitrary  disregard 
of  the  facts  of  life  and  for  a  freakish  distortion 
of  natural  human  motives.  This  is  one  reason 
why  certain  plays  surviving  from  that  glorious 
era  lack  plausibility  and  sometimes  even  sincerity. 
Fortunately  prose  has  now  established  itself 
firmly  as  the  fit  medium  for  such  plays  as  are  not 
avowedly  poetic  in  theme.  Some  dramatic  poets 
at  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century  are  not 
ready  to  abandon  prose  even  when  they  aspire 
to  enter  the  realm  of  fantasy;  and  it  has  also^ 
been  the  medium  chosen  by  M.  Maeterlinck  for 
his  melodious  dramatic  poems,  ever  vague,  often 
monotonous,  and  frequently  formless,  but  at 
times  rich  in  mystic  beauty  and  in  symbolic  sug- 
gestion. 

Prose,  again,  is  what  Ibsen  has  used  in  all  his 
later  social  dramas,  poetic  and  indeed  almost 
allegorical  as  some  of  them  have  been  in  inten- 
tion.    Here  we  have  another  evidence  of  his 
345 


THE   FUTURE   OF  THE   DRAMA 

profound  artistic  sense ;  for  the  fight  Ibsen  wished 
to  wage  prose  was  the  best  weapon,— a  prose 
rhythmic,  modulated,  flexible,  picked  clean  of  all 
verbiage,  and  adjusting  itself  sinuously  to  the 
thought  it  had  to  express.  A  prose  that  achieved 
its  purpose  so  perfectly  had  almost  the  beauty  of 
poetry;  and  there  was  a  like  perfection  in  the 
structure  of  his  plots,  as  masterly  as  they  are 
straightforward. 

The  art  of  the  drama,  so  an  acute  American 
critic  has  pointed  out,  is  parallel  to  the  art  of  the 
great  builders  "  in  the  sequence  of  its  parts,  its 
ordered  beauty,  the  inevitableness  of  its  converg- 
ing lines,  its  manifestation  of  superintending 
thought."  In  the  dramaturgic  art,  as  in  the  archi- 
tectural, the  latest  form  may  be  only  a  reversion 
to  a  primitive  type  newly  adjusted  with  all  the 
modern  improvements;  and  as  our  towering 
steel-frame  buildings  are  in  fact  only  the  humble 
frame-house  of  our  forefathers  wrought  in  metal 
instead  of  in  timber,  so  the  constructive  methods 
of  Ibsen  are  closely  akin  to  those  of  Sophocles, 
however  different  the  ancient  play  may  be  from 
the  modern  in  subject-matter. 

In  the  effort  to  grasp  this  severity  of  form,  the 
playwrights  of  the  twentieth  century  will  be  in- 
fluenced also  by  the  steadily  increasing  interest  in 
personality.  The  lyric,  which  is  ever  the  ex- 
pression of  an  individual  emotion,  is  now  far 
346 


THE   FUTURE   OF   THE    DRAMA 

more  widely  cultivated  than  any  other  species  of 
poetry;  and  in  prose-fiction  there  is  an  irresistible 
tendency  toward  a  more  careful  and  a  more  mi- 
nute delineation  of  character.  In  the  drama,  an 
intrigue  of  which  the  convolutions  shall  seem 
artificial  or  arbitrary  will  be  incompatible  with 
any  depth  of  character-analysis.  The  interest  in 
personality  is  perhaps  a  chief  cause  of  the  insis- 
tence upon  a  strict  adherence  to  the  admitted  facts 
of  life,  and  of  that  relish  for  realism  and  for  the 
subtleties  of  psychology  which  may  be  called 
the  predominant  characteristics  of  serious  prose- 
fiction  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century.  It 
is  probably  also  one  of  the  springs  of  that  desire 
to  understand  sympathetically  members  of  other 
classes  than  our  own,  which  is  likely  to  exert  an 
obvious  influence  upon  the  drama  of  the  imme- 
diate future. 

If  the  dramatist  is  to  respond  to  this  interest  in 
personality,  and  if  he  is  to  reflect  the  social  move- 
ment of  his  own  age,  then  he  will  have  an  added 
reason  for  striving  to  deal  boldly  with  his  main 
theme,  avoiding  all  complexity  of  plot-mongering, 
which  is  necessarily  inconsistent  with  any  sin- 
cerity of  character-drawing.  He  will  acquaint 
himself  wrth  the  methods  of  Scribe;  but  he  will 
not  allow  himself  to  hold  Scribe's  theories  too 
exclusively.  Scribe  had  adjusted  situations  so 
adroitly,  one  impinging  on  the  other,  that  he  had 
347 


THE    FUTURE    OF   THE    DRAMA 

no  need  of  a  serious  study  of  men  and  women. 
Indeed,  he  had  no  room  for  anything  of  the  sort; 
and  in  his  workshop,  as  in  so  many  others,  ma- 
chinery had  ousted  human  beings.  Then  the 
younger  Dumas,  brought  up  in  the  play-factory 
of  his  father,  was  able  to  make  the  mechanism 
less  intricate,  and  so  to  provide  room  for  a  little 
emotion  and  a  little  humanity.  At  last  Ibsen,^ 
trained  in  the  theater  itself  and  familiar  with 
every  device  of  French  stagecraft,  made  his 
profit  out  of  all  his  predecessors  and  perfected  a 
.  technic  of  his  own,  which  represents  that  ad- 
vanced condition  of  an  art  when  the  utmost  in- 
genuity is  utilized  to  avoid  artificiality  and  when 
complexity  is  made  to  take  on  the  appearance  of 
simplicity. 

Thus  it  is  that  Ibsen  stretches  back  across  the 
centuries  to  clasp  hands  with  Sophocles;  and  a 
comparison  of  the  sustaining  skeleton  of  the  story 
in  '  Oedipus  the  King '  with  that  in  '  Ghosts  '  will 
bring  out  the  fundamental  likeness  of  the  Scan- 
dinavian dramatist  to  the  Greek,— at  least  in  so 
far  as  the  building  of  their  plots  is  concerned. 
Inspired  in  the  one  case  by  the  idea  of  fate  and  in 
the  other  by  the  doctrine  of  heredity,  each  of 
them  worked  out  a  theme  of  overwhelming  im- 
port and  of  weighty  simplicity.  Each  of  them  in 
his  drama  dealt  not  so  much  with  actiop  in  the 
present  before  the  eyes  of  the  spectator,  as  with 
348 


THE   FUTURE   OF   THE    DRAMA 

the  appalling  and  inexorable  consequences  of 
action  in  the  past  before  the  play  began.  In  both 
dramas  these  deeds  done  long  ago  are  not  set 
forth  in  a  brief  exposition  more  or  less  inge- 
niously included  in  the  earlier  scenes:  they  are 
slowly  revealed  one  by  one  in  the  course  of  the 
play,  and  each  at  the  moment  when  the  revela- 
tion is  most  harrowing.  , 

The  influence  of  Ibsen  has  been  felt  in  all  the 
theaters  of  civilization,  and  none  the  less  keenly 
by  playwrights  who  would  deny  that  they  were 
his  disciples,  who  dislike  his  attitude,  and  who 
disapprove  of  his  subjects.  His  influence  has 
been  exerted  both  upon  the  manner  of  thecon- 
temporary  drama  and  upon  its  matter.  His 
technic  is  the  last  word  of  craftsmanship;  yet  it 
never  flaunts  its  surpassing  dexterity  in  the  eyes 
of  the  playgoer,  for  it  has  the  saving  grace  that 
its  ingenuity  is  so  abundant  that  it  can  conceal 
itself.  And  Ibsen  has  shown  how  this  technic 
could  be  employed  in  the  depicting  of  modern 
life  with  its  inconsistencies,  its  reticences,  its 
unwillingness  to  look  into  itself.  His  social 
plays— tragic,  some  of  them,  deep  and  search- 
ing always,  yet  sometimes  freakish  and  uncon- 
vincing—stand as  a  complete  answer  to  those 
who  think  that  the  drama  is  now  only  the  idle 
amusement  of  men  and  women  who  are  digest- 
ing their  dinners. 

349 


THE   FUTURE   OF  THE   DRAMA 

An  idle  amusement  the  theater  often  is  now,  as 
it  always  has  been  in  the  past;  and  the  stage  is 
only  too  often  occupied  by  empty  spectacle. 
Yet  the  drama  in  its  graver  aspects,  the  drama  as 
a  contributi(^n  to  literature  and  as  a  form  of 
poetry,  is  not  dead,  nor  is  it  dying.  Indeed, 
there  is  evidence  that  it  is  on  the  threshold  of  a 
new  youth.  .-Sighs  of  its  refreshed  vitality  can  be 
found  by  whoso  cares;to  keepfhis  eyes  open  and 
his  mind  free  from  prejudice.  It  bids  fair  to  win 
back  the  attention  of  many  who  have  been  taken 
captive  by  tHe  flexibility  and  freedom  of  prose- 
fiction.  It  cannot  do.  all  that  the  novel  may  ac- 
complish; but?,  it  can  do  many  things  that  the 
novel  is  striving  vainly  to  achieve. 

Only  the  future  can  decide  whether  or  not  the 
drama  is  successfully  to  contest  the  present  su- 
premacy of  prose-fiction.  Years  may  elapse  be- 
fore the  play  shall  evict  tlae  novel  from  its  appa- 
rent primacy ;  or  it  may  never  be  able  to  resume 
its  former  superiority.  The  two  most  obvious 
characteristics  of  the  century  that  has  gone  are 
the  spread  of  democracy  and  the  growth  of  the 
scientific  spirit;  and  in  the  century  that  has  just 
begun  we  may  dfscover  that- the  drama,  which 
has  always  been  democratic  of  necessity,  shall 
prove  also  to  be  more  satisfying  than  prose-fic- 
tion to  a  people  bred  to  science.  Even  now  we 
can  see  that  not  only  the  plays  of  Ibsen  but  also 
350 


THE   FUTURE   OF   THE    DRAMA 

those  of  Bjornson  and  Sudermann,  of  Verga  and 
Echegaray,  of  Hervieu  and  Pinero,  stand  forward 
to  show  that  the  drama  can  deal  adequately  and 
suggestively  with  some  of  the  problems  of  exis- 
tence as  these  present  themselves  tumultuously 
to-day  in  our  seething  society. 


^•v 


351 


^//- 


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RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH 

LOAN  DEPT. 


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